Dear Colleague,
Arctic Icebreaker Planning Meeting
Thursday, 27 January 2000
5:30-7:00 Pm
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center (Ocean Sciences Meeting Site)
Room 213
The UNOLS Arctic Icebreaker Coordinating Committee (AICC) is an
NSF/USCG-sanctioned committee whose purpose is to provide Arctic marine
science projects with planning and scheduling assistance and to facilitate
communications between scientists, science funders, and facility providers.
Particular concerns of this committee at present are the US Coast Guard
icebreakers Polar Sea, Polar Star, and Healy. Additional information about
the AICC is available on the UNOLS web site
http://www.gso.uri.edu/unols/unols.html or the Arctic Research Consortium
of the United States http://www.arcus.org/AICC/AICC.html.
To advance expeditionary planning for 2001-2005 and to keep the community
at large informed of the status of US icebreakers for Arctic marine
research, the AICC will hold a public information and planning meeting at
the 2000 Ocean Sciences Meeting on Thursday, 27 January 2000, from
5:30-7:00 pm in Room 213 of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San
Antonio.
Those interested who are attending the Ocean Sciences Meeting, but cannot
attend the icebreaker planning meeting, please see Jim Swift, the AICC
Chair, for a copy of a summary of planning ideas submitted through December
1999 or to provide new planning ideas. That summary is located as a PDF:
http://gso.uri.edu/unols/committees/healyuse.pdf
The Committee's goal for these meetings is to help pull together a critical
mass of scientific planning to give direction for scientists in writing
proposals. At each planning meeting the AICC will discuss with the science
community various advance propositions for Arctic marine research use of
the Healy and Polar-class icebreakers. These advance plans can be
submitted in person or by email. Investigators will not be bound by their
submitted planning ideas. Plans received by the AICC from past
solicitations will be retained, and can be modified or dropped at any time
by the submitters. These will be incorporated into a rolling 5-year
community science plan for these vessels which considers scientific focus,
region, season, year, and additional logistics considerations. During
early 2000 the community Arctic vessel use plan will appear on the UNOLS
web site. The AICC will repeat a call for Healy vessel use ideas and plans
- and hold similar planning meetings - on an at-least annual basis.
Planning ideas can be submitted at any time and still be considered.
These community plans will help guide the AICC and give the Coast Guard and
US funding agencies a rough advance measure of community interest in using
USCGC Healy and the Polar-class icebreakers for Arctic marine research, but
the planning process is in no way meant to influence agency funding
decisions.
For plans or ideas submitted in person or by email, the following
information is useful:
Investigator name:
Investigator email address:
Investigator telephone:
Working title of research project:
Likely support agency:
Region:
Year(s) preferred:
Season(s) preferred:
Approx. number of in-Arctic days needed (not including transits):
Approx. size of science party:
Foreign EEZs in which you need to work:
Short description of seagoing activities:
The AICC reminds all that a formal ship-time request for Arctic science
missions on the Polar-class vessels and the Healy (available beginning ca.
March 2001) must be submitted as part of the proposal process. Information
submitted for the community Arctic vessel use plan described in this
message does not constitute such a ship-time request. A ship-time request
form is available from http://gso.uri.edu/unols/unols.html.
Please attend a planning meeting and/or reply by email to the UNOLS Office
unols [at] gsosun1.gso.uri.edu.
James H. Swift, Chair
UNOLS Arctic Icebreaker Coordinating Committee
jswift [at] ucsd.edu