PYRN | Permafrost Young Researchers Network

Stipends at TICOP - Deadline 3 February 2012

There are some important developments in regards to the student stipends for TICOP.

1. 150 young researchers who are first author on either an oral or a poster presentation will receive a full stipend generously funded by the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District. The stipend will cover return travel costs by charter flight from Moscow to Salekhard, registration fees, student housing in Salekhard, a local field excursion during the conference, meals and social events.

2. The latest date for submission of extended abstracts and application for student stipends is February 3, 2012.

3. Regular registration will cover return travel costs by charter flight from Moscow to Salekhard, conference fees, meals, social events and housing in Salekhard, with the cost of the total package depending on the level of accommodation selected. In short, you will only have to pay the flight to Moscow, the rest is taken care of. Total costs are:

a. 1550 USD with economy accommodation
b. 1950 USD with standard accommodation
c. 2220 USD with standard+ accommodation
d. 2820 USD with business accommodation

Discounts of 50 USD will be applied to individual paying members of the IPA.

4. Extended field trips will take place after the conference with the return charter flight to Moscow taking place on July 5. The trips will be offered at very advantageous rate.

5. The updated web-site will be operational by January 16, 2012 to allow applications for student stipends, registration (including for field trips) and submission of extended abstracts. If you have already registered, your personal profile will be transferred to the updated site.

Details of all these points will be available on the web-site in mid-January.

For those who plan to submit an extended abstract, please start preparing it now and be ready to re-visit the TICOP site on January 16, 2012.

We look forward to seeing you at an exciting conference in Salekhard next June!

Best regards,

Hans Hubberten, President IPA
Antoni Lewkowicz, Senior Vice-President IPA

10th International Conference on Permafrost, June 25-29, 2012, Salekhard, Russia

The International Conference on Permafrost, held every four years, is the premier venue for all research related to permafrost.
The second circular for the conference can be found at:
http://8289235251884410216-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.co...

Extended abstracts are due January 10, 2012 in Russian and February 15, 2012 in English.

Contact email address: ticop@tmsnc.ru

Report from PYRN Germany

Here are some news from the German-speaking PYRN community:
This community includes PYRN members coming from and/or working in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Many of them are members of the Permafrost Working Committee of the German Society of Polar Research (DGP; http://www.dgp-ev.de), which meets annually in the fall at various institutes in Germany. Two years ago it was decided to establish a PYRN side meeting at these occasions, because the number of young scientists attending the meetings by now exceeds the number of senior scientists.

This year the meeting of the Permafrost Working Committee took place in Bonn/Rolandseck from October 31st to November 2nd, 2011 and was organized by Michael Krautblatter and Cordula Teschner from Bonn University (a big THANK YOU again!). The attendant PYRN members (about 30 people) used the afternoon prior to the overarching permafrost meeting of the 31st to introduce themselves, their projects and to follow up on the discussions of the previous meetings.

Oliver Wild (Justus Liebig University Giessen) stressed that students at German universities have very few opportunities to get involved in permafrost research since the last professorship for permafrost research, held by Lorenz King, has been abandoned in 2011. Oliver presented his idea of a project-based teaching. After an introduction of basic concepts, students could work on freely available data from the permafrost community (e.g. CALM, TSP) or provided by researchers who have not had time to use them for their own projects but find them too interesting to leave them covering with dust. A coordinated approach at different German universities where permafrost research projects are conducted would give students the opportunity to get a better overview of the German permafrost research landscape spanning a large variety of disciplines.

Hugues Lantuit (Alfred Wegener Institute, Potsdam (AWI)), the founder of PYRN and now IPA Executive Director, gave a short report on the TICOP planning and related PYRN issues. Michael Fritz (AWI) provided information on funding possibilities for German PYRN members to cover TICOP expenses.

After this general part the group split up into two interest groups that formed during the previous meeting in 2010. The first group led by Tobias Rödder and Daniel Schwindt (both at Julius-Maximilian's University of Würzburg) consisted mostly of mountain permafrost researchers using geophysical methods. They discussed how to standardize geophysical data acquisition and data formatting which is a prerequisite for a common interpretation of existing data on permafrost-related research questions (active layer thickness, ice content). At present more and more data in the European Alps are collected via geophysical monitoring systems with high temporal resolution. This growing data base enables a regional or alpine-wide comparison of changes in various investigated landforms (rock glaciers, talus slopes, unconsolidated sediments, rock faces).

The second group had a general interest in organic matter parameters from permafrost across disciplines. Michael Fritz (AWI), Silke Höfle (University of Cologne) and Jens Strauss (AWI) introduced a preliminary version of a sampling protocol in order to standardizing sampling procedures, techniques, and measurements of organic components contained in permafrost landscapes. The aim is to coordinate the different interests and approaches of individual researchers or even disciplines dealing with the measurement of particular, fluid and gaseous organic matter parameters. In a second step we will provide assistance and route sheets to raise awareness of the challenges associated with permafrost sampling and to finally increase the usability of hard-won samples and data.

As you can see, the German-speaking PYRN community enjoys its annual meetings and tries to keep things going. If you have any questions, comments or ideas, please contact us. The efforts of PYRN Germany are currently coordinated by Michael Fritz (Michael.Fritz@awi.de), Silke Höfle (shoefle@uni-koeln.de), Tobias Rödder (tobias.roedder@uni-wuerzburg.de), Daniel Schwindt (daniel.schwindt@uni-wuerzburg.de), Sebastian Zubrzycki (S.Zubrzycki@ifb.uni-hamburg.de), and Anne Morgenstern (Anne.Morgenstern@awi.de).

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PYRN is kindly hosted by the World Association of Young Scientists (WAYS). The World Association of Young Scientists (WAYS), supported by UNESCO and ICSU, is the permanent network of young scientists devoted to facilitate the access to science worldwide. WAYS is the largest collaborative scientific community in the world.
PYRN is part of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists, the global network for early career scientists and engineers involved and interested in Polar and Cryospheric Research.
PYRN is an activity of the International Permafrost Association. The IPA objectives are to foster the dissemination of knowledge concerning permafrost and to promote cooperation among persons and organizations engaged in scientific investigation and engineering work on permafrost.