Check out the other related programs that have been or are still in operation.
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)
Germany’s
leading institute for polar and marine research. Polar and marine
research are central themes of global system and environmental science.
The Alfred Wegener Institute conducts research in the Arctic, the
Antarctic and at temperate latitudes. It coordinates polar research in
Germany and provides both the necessary equipment and the essential
logistical back up for polar expeditions. Recent additional research
themes include North Sea Research, contributions to Marine Biological
Monitoring, Marine Pollution Research, investigation of naturally
occuring marine substances, and technical marine developments.
Click here to visit their website.
Antarctic Climate Evolution (ACE)
ACE
is an international research initiative that has grown out of the
ANTOSTRAT (ANTarctic Offshore STRATigraphy) project. ANTOSTRAT was
sanctioned by SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) in
1996, to reconstruct the paleoclimatic and glacial history of the
Antarctic region from the study of the sedimentary record surrounding
the continent. The ANTOSTRAT program officially came to an end in July,
2002. The goal of ACE is to continue the study of Antarctic climate and
glacial history, through paleoclimate and ice sheet modeling studies,
purposefully integrated with geological investigations of the proxy
record of ancient Antarctic climates and ice sheets. ACE is now an
official SCAR program.
Click here to visit their website.
Antarctic Ice Margin Evolution (ANTIME)
Studies
in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are critically important to our
understanding of global climate and environmental variability. Several
current issues, such as the continuing depletion of stratospheric
ozone, the partial disintegration of ice-shelves, and uncertainties in
Antarctic ice-sheet mass-balance and potential impact on sea-level,
highlight the importance of the region. Regional properties and
processes have important global consequences, from atmospheric
composition to ocean circulation. In addition, the region is also
susceptible to change in our global environment, potentially giving
rise to strong feedbacks which could accelerate climatic change. Models
of global climate predict the greatest changes at high latitudes.
Evidence for the region’s involvement in the global environmental
system are captured in natural archives such as ice and sediment.
Records retrieved from these archives reveal the frequency and
magnitude of natural climate variability over long timescales, prior to
the few decades of direct observation.
Click here to visit their website.
Antarctic Neotectonics (ANTEC)
Current page being updated.
Click here to visit their website.
Antarctica New Zealand
Antarctica
New Zealand was established under The New Zealand Antarctic Institute
Act 1996 and is responsible for developing, managing, and administering
New Zealand’s activities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,
particularly the Ross Sea region. They are also responsible for
enhancing New Zealand scientific research, and providing sound
environmental stewardship. In addition to supporting scientific
research through logistics planning and scholarships, Antarctica New
Zealand runs arts, media and education programs. These increase public
awareness and appreciation of Antarctica and it’s conservation values.
Antarctica New Zealand is responsible for the year-round management of
Scott Base, one of the first bases to be established in Antarctica.
Scott Base provides services and accommodation for the many research
parties and groups who visit Antarctica during the Austral summer.
Click here to visit their website.
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
The
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is a component of the Natural
Environment Research Council. Based in Cambridge UK, for almost 60
years, it has undertaken the majority of Britain’s scientific research
on and around the Antarctic continent. BAS supports three stations in
the Antarctic, at Rothera, Halley and Signy, and two stations on South
Georgia, at King Edward Point and Bird Island. The Antarctic operations
and science programs are executed and managed from Cambridge, and rely
on a wide-ranging team of professional staff.
Click here to visit their website.
Cape Roberts Project
The
Cape Roberts Project is a cooperative venture between scientists,
administrators and Antarctic support personnel from 7 countries -
Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and the
United States of America. It was set up to investigate the early
history of the East Antarctic ice sheet and the West Antarctic Rift
System by coring sedimentary strata near the edge of the present ice
sheet and close to the Transantarctic Mountains. The project collected
sediment core from three drillholes drilled from fast ice in McMurdo
Sound in 1997, 1998, and 1999.
Click here to visit their website.
EuroANDRILL
EuroANDRILL is a new initiative to create a European network with the goal to increase future involvement of European countries in the ANDRILL [ANtarctic geological DRILLing] Program. EuroANDRILL will provide the venue for European scientists to: (1) participate in forthcoming projects and develop proposals with key scientific questions in other Antarctic margins, with strong European leadership and/or logistical support, and (2) help the international ANDRILL community prioritise future drill sites with the aim of better constraining the past and future dynamic behaviour of the Antarctic ice sheets. EuroANDRILL partners are Italy, Germany and United Kingdom (already members of ANDRILL consortium) and seven additional European countries : Spain, Belgium, Finland, France, Poland, Sweden, and The Netherlands. The United States, New Zealand, and Russia are non-EU collaborating parters of EuroANDRILL. The next phase of ANDRILL drilling is underdevelopment for the Coulman High region to the east of Ross Island, on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Click here to visit their website.
European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA)
EPICA
is a multinational European project for deep ice core drilling in
Antarctica. Its main objective is to obtain full documentation of the
climatic and atmospheric record archived in Antarctic ice by drilling
and analyzing two ice cores and comparing these with their Greenland
counterparts. Evaluation of these records will provide information
about the natural climate variability and mechanisms of rapid climatic
changes during the last glacial epoch.
Click here to visit their website.
FASTDRILL
The
scientific community interested in sampling polar ice sheets and their
substrata has been growing recently and now incorporates biologists,
geologists, and glaciologists. This multidisciplinary interest is
opening new research frontiers. Significantly advancing our scientific
understanding along many of these frontiers will require targeted
sampling strategies and the acquisition of data from arrays of deep
access holes on multiple spatial scales ranging from local to
continent-wide. Recent advances in drilling technology may allow the
development of a mobile drilling system capable of rapidly drilling
arrays of boreholes through the 3-4 km thick polar ice sheets (Clow and
Koci, 2000). A fast mechanical-access drill for polar glaciology,
paleoclimatology, geology, tectonics, and biology: Mem. Natl. Inst.
Polar Res., v. 56). Scientific applications that would be possible with
a fast-access drilling system include, but would not be restricted to:
sampling of subglacial geology, both glacially-related strata and
bedrock; investigation of basal conditions and their control on ice
sliding; geothermal heat flow measurements; providing access to
subglacial lakes; detection of life in deep ice through sampling and
borehole logging; site selection for deep ice cores; logging climate
proxies with geophysical instruments; borehole paleothermometry; and
ice rheology studies.
Click here to visit their website.
Global Change and the Antarctic Continent (GLOCHANT)
Studies
in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are critically important to our
understanding of global climate and environmental variability. Several
current issues, such as the continuing depletion of stratospheric
ozone, the partial disintegration of ice-shelves, and uncertainties in
Antarctic ice-sheet mass-balance and potential impact on sea-level,
highlight the importance of the region. Regional properties and
processes have important global consequences, from atmospheric
composition to ocean circulation. In addition, the region is also
susceptible to change in our global environment, potentially giving
rise to strong feedbacks which could accelerate climatic change. Models
of global climate predict the greatest changes at high latitudes.
Evidence for the region’s involvement in the global environmental
system are captured in natural archives such as ice and sediment.
Records retrieved from these archives reveal the frequency and
magnitude of natural climate variability over long timescales, prior to
the few decades of direct observation. GLOCHANT now includes nine
projects that cover physical studies on the ocean-ice-atmosphere
system, palaeoenvironmental studies, and ecological studies on impacts
and biogeochemistry. The SCAR global change programme has an ongoing
interaction with the World Climate Research Programme and the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. This relationship promotes
Antarctic global change studies, and relates these to other regional
and global studies.
Click here to visit their website.
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)
The
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) is an international marine
research program that explores Earth’s history and structure recorded
in seafloor sediments and rocks, and monitors subseafloor environments.
IODP builds upon the earlier successes of the Deep Sea Drilling Project
(DSDP) and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), which revolutionized our view
of Earth history and global processes through ocean basin exploration.
IODP greatly expands the reach of these previous programs by using
multiple drilling platforms, including riser, riserless, and
mission-specific, to achieve its scientific goals.
Click here to visit their website.
International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP)
The
International Continental Scientific Drilling Program is a
multinational program to further and fund Geosciences in the field of
Continental Scientific Drilling. Scientific Drilling is a critical tool
in understanding of Earth processes and structure. It provides direct
insight into Earth processes and critically tests geological models.
Results obtained from drilling projects at critical sites can be
applied to other areas worldwide. It is, therefore, believed that
international cooperation in continental scientific drilling is an
essential component for a responsible management strategy for the
Earth’s natural resources and environment. Currently Austria, Canada,
China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Mexico,
Norway, Poland, South Africa and U.S.A. are members through national
funding organizations or major research institutions. In addition,
UNESCO, and Schlumberger Inc. are Corporate Affiliates, IODP is an
associated member.
Click here to visit their website.
International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP)
IGBP's
mission is to deliver scientific knowledge to help human societies
develop in harmony with Earth's environment. Our scientific objective
is to describe and understand the interactive physical, chemical and
biological processes that regulate the total Earth System, the unique
environment that it provides for life, the changes that are occurring
in this system, and the manner in which they are influenced by human
actions.
Click here to visit their website.
International Marine Past Global Changes (IMAGES)
IMAGES
was initiated to respond to the challenge of understanding the
mechanisms and consequences of climatic changes using oceanic
sedimentary records. Climatic mechanisms must be studied at global
scales using sophisticated models based on high quality data that
represent the variability of surface and deep ocean physical and
chemical characteristics during key periods of recent Earth history.
Individual research is no longer sufficient to resolve this problem
because the acquisition of the required, long sediment cores in high
sedimentation rate areas is expensive, and the proper study of such
cores demands the use of multiple tools and large numbers of
measurements. IMAGES was built as an international effort for the
marine sediment research of PAGES-IGBP, with the support of SCOR. The
major goal of IMAGES is to foster co-ordination, at the international
level, of scientific programs that address the scientific goals
outlined in the IMAGES "Science and Implementation Plan."
Click here to visit their website.
International Polar Year (IPY)
A
concerted worldwide effort is underway to plan scientific and
educational activities for the upcoming International Polar Year (IPY).
Scheduled to officially begin in March 2007, IPY promises to advance
our understanding of how the Earth’s remote polar regions impact global
climate systems, to bring about fundamental advances in many areas of
science, and to fire the enthusiasm of young men and women for future
careers in science and engineering.
Click here to visit their website.
MARGINS Program
Continental
margins are the Earth’s principal loci for producing hydrocarbon and
metal resources, for earthquake, landslide, volcanic and climatic
hazards, and for the greatest population density. Despite the societal
and economic importance of margins, many of the mechanical, fluid,
chemical and biological processes that shape them are poorly
understood. Progress is hindered by the sheer scope of the problems and
by the space and time scales as well as the complexities of the
processes. To overcome these obstacles, the earth science community has
identified the outstanding scientific problems in continental margins
research and the MARGINS Program is promoting research strategies that
redirect traditional approaches to margin studies. In particular, the
MARGINS Program will focus on the coordinated, interdisciplinary
investigation of four fundamental initiatives; the Seismogenic Zone
Experiment, the Subduction Factory, Rupturing Continental Lithosphere,
and Sediment Dynamics and Strata Formation (Source to Sink). Each
initiative is associated with two focus sites, research locations
selected by the community to address the complete range of field,
experimental and theoretical studies, over the full range of spatial
and temporal scales needed to address fundamental questions associated
with each initiative. The MARGINS Focus Sites are shown on this web
page. The MARGINS Program is funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF), and is driven by input from, and interaction with the earth
science community.
Click here to visit their website.
National Antarctic Programme for Italy (PNRA)
Italy's Antarctic Program.
Click here to visit their website.
Past Global Changes (PAGES)
PAGES
(Past Global Changes) supports research aimed at understanding the
Earth's past environment in order to make predictions for the future.
We encourage international and interdisciplinary collaborations and
seek to involve scientists from developing countries in the worldwide
paleo-community. PAGES’ scope of interest includes the physical climate
system, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem processes, biodiversity, and
human dimensions, on different time scales- Pleistocene, Holocene, last
millennium and the recent past. PAGES, founded in 1991, is a core
project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) and is
funded by the U.S. and Swiss National Science Foundations, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is overseen
by a Scientific Steering Committee comprised of members chosen to
represent the major techniques and disciplines, while at the same time
providing regional geographic representation.
Click here to visit their website.
Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR)
Welcome
to the Home Page of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
(SCAR), an inter-disciplinary committee of the International Council
for Science (ICSU). SCAR is charged with initiating, developing and
coordinating high-quality international scientific research in the
Antarctic region, and on the role of the Antarctic region in the Earth
system. The scientific business of SCAR is conducted by its Standing
Scientific Groups, which represent the scientific disciplines active in
Antarctic research and report to SCAR.
Click here to visit their website.
SHALDRIL
A
marine geological research program with the goal of recovering sediment
cores from the Antarctic shelf by drilling from an ice breaker. This
approach will enable the recovery of important stratigraphics data and
dating seismic sequences on the Antarctic continental shelf. The
principal objective of this initial drilling leg is to test the
drilling system using the RV/IB N.B. Palmer, but the core
acquired will have immense scientific value. The targets include
Tertiary strata that should record climate change and cryosphere
evolution in the Antarctic Peninsula region, and the faunal and floral
changes associated with these events. Other drill sites will include a
site targeting a Pleistocene grounding zone wedge and its record of ice
flow during the last glacial maximum, and a site targeting an expanded
Holocene section that bears a record of high-frequency climate change.
Click here to visit their website.
US-NSF Office of Polar Programs and United States Antarctic Program (USAP)
The
Office of Polar Programs (OPP) manages and initiates National Science
Foundation funding for basic research and its operational support in
the Arctic and the Antarctic. The funds are provided as NSF grants to
institutions (mainly U.S. universities), whose scientists perform the
research at the institutions or in a polar region, and as cooperative
agreements or contracts to support organizations including contractors
and the U.S. military. OPP supports individual investigators or
research teams and U.S. participation in multinational projects.
Projects can involve investigators from many disciplines and
institutions over several years. Organizationally, OPP has two science
sections, one each for the Arctic and the Antarctic. A third section
manages the provision of logistics and support operations including
field stations, camps, and laboratories. The United States is a leading
nation in polar science, and research results have global significance.
As well, the polar regions intrigue the public and provide
opportunities for educational enrichment.
Click here to visit the NSF Polar Programs website.
Click here to visit the USAP website.
