BOEM, NSF help fund Arctic research

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, in partnership with the National Science Foundation has issued the first round of funding awards for an international program of scientific research into the sustainability of the Arctic environment. The research will address changes in both the natural environment and socio-economic conditions in the region, BOEM says.

Investigators from the United States, France, Canada, Russia, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom are involved in the research program.

The first study being funded by the two U.S. government agencies will measure and assess the long-term cumulative impacts of the growing oil-and-gas-industry infrastructure in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska’s North Slope. The study, to be led by Donald Walker from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has a goal of finding ways to reduce the impacts of future developments in the region, BOEM says.

A second study that the agencies are funding will examine the vulnerability and resilience of the walrus population offshore the North Slope, with the intention of gaining insights into the interactions between climate change, subsistence harvesting, walrus population dynamics and walrus life habits.

Erica Key, program manager for the Arctic Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program in the National Science Foundation’s Geosciences Directorate, characterized the research program as a timely effort to address the impacts on Arctic people of environmental change.

“Twenty years ago, the Arctic Council emphasized the need to engage science for sustainability in the high north,” Key said. “In that time, the Arctic environment and population has changed considerably.”

“BOEM welcomes the opportunity to partner with NSF and other world-class scientific organizations looking at Arctic sustainability,” said Tommy Beaudreau, BOEM director.

—Alan Bailey