Documents

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP09a: Strategic Plan for the SCAR Standing Scientific Group for the Physical Sciences

Introduction

Understanding the earth-system, its components and the connections and feedbacks is a major endeavour of our time. This is driven largely but not entirely by the critical problem of climate change. Antarctica is a key component of the global system, and yet there remain large gaps in our understanding of the physical system that will be the focus of research to come.

Many of the outstanding research challenges relevant to SSG/PS lie at interfaces between bio-geo-physical domains that require cross-disciplinary approaches within and beyond the physical sciences. Within the physical realm, processes at the interfaces between ice, ocean, land and atmosphere are critical to our ability to describe and predict the response to climate change. Outstanding uncertainties will require continued research directed at improving understanding of ice sheet dynamics, extracting climate records from the ice sheet, exploring processes and changes in sea-ice and ocean circulation and improving understanding of atmospheric dynamics and chemistry.

A distinct component of physical sciences research in Antarctica is based on the unique properties of the continent which favour astronomical and solar-terrestrial observations. Much of this research is of wider human interest and not directly applicable to earth-system questions, although the solar-terrestrial component has obvious applicability to climate-related research.

Beyond the physical system, the need to understand ecosystem impacts and biological feedbacks will continue to drive research of even broader cross-disciplinary scope. Biological responses to environmental change need to be informed by the physical changes, and increasingly we are aware that biological processes play a role in the physical system.

SCAR Physical Sciences Standing Group will play an important role in identifying needs, and coordinating the research effort, along with the Geosciences and Life Sciences areas. The emerging earth system questions will be addressed by fostering and increasing cross-linkages between the physical sciences and other groups.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP09b: Strategic Plan for the SCAR Standing Scientific Group for the Life Sciences

Introduction

The Antarctic as a cold, isolated, pristine environment is undergoing significant change through regional climate warming, ozone depletion, alien introductions, long range transport of contaminants and increased global attention as a scientific and tourist destination and a fisheries provider.   Over the 21^st century, the Antarctic is projected to warm by 3.4 ± 1°C and lose about 30% of its sea ice extent.  Biologically, the Antarctic is a centre of evolutionary divergence and adaptation to polar extremes.  Its diversity is now threatened by environmental changes occurring on short time scales that do not accommodate natural selection.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP09c: Strategic Plan for the SCAR Standing Scientific Group for the Geosciences

Author: Philip O’Brien

SCAR was originally conceived as the body to coordinate international science within the Antarctic and to provide scientific advice to the Antarctic Treaty and its bodies. I see these as the 2 big items for which we have a role. Over time, SCAR has also developed a role in coordinating and managing Antarctic data. Adding any more tasks may become difficult given the volunteer workforce and limited resources.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP10: Functioning and Leadership of SSGs

Goal: By 2010 streamline the SSGs’ meetings to develop a higher level of strategic thinking, more focus on scientific outputs and less on the mechanics of administration, and the production of a streamlined report following a specified template, so as to engender more excitement at Delegates’ meetings about SCAR’s mission and work.

The Issue: The organizational transformation of SCAR has been completed with ongoing continuous improvement. The next step is to rethink how SCAR conducts its business, emphasizing improved communication, inclusion and consultation. The adoption of an interactive model for how we function, while embracing a forward-looking and more efficient approach to conducting SCAR business, is an essential next step in the evolution of SCAR. Two key steps are involved:

• reforming the SSG Business meetings (this paper)
• reforming the Delegates meetings (paper WP 21).

SCAR’s biennial meetings provide a critical communication opportunity through which to demonstrate the benefits of SCAR’s membership to the Delegates, so these meetings must be organized and managed in such a way as to exploit to the full the potential for communicating exciting developments and plans to the Delegates. These are our first-order customers as they finance the organization, and the future of SCAR is critically dependent on its member nations feeling that they are getting value for their investment.

The Objective: The conduct of SCAR’s business begins at the formulation of reports by the SSGs, SRPs, SCs and others and ends with final adoption of the report by the Delegates. All steps along the way need to be orchestrated within a coordinated structure as the last step is dependent on the first step and each step in the process sets the stage for each succeeding step. The overarching objective is to regularize how SCAR conducts business, to free all of us to concentrate our efforts on the substantive internal and external issues we need to address as a team. A secondary purpose is to reduce the paper burden at all levels. Overly long papers are not read and important items are often lost or obscured in the process. The conduct of SCAR business is essential but it should not inordinately consume our limited time, resources, and attention. It is hoped that once these reforms are adopted our time and effort on these duties will be decreased, the meetings are conducted in a more methodical fashion, and the Delegates feel that they are an essential and integral part of the process.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP11ii: Instructions on SCAR SSG Reports to the Delegates

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP12: SCAR Data and Information Strategy

Data and Information Management Strategy (DIMS) – 2009 – 2013

Executive Summary

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) – an inter-disciplinary scientific body of the International Council of Science (ICSU) – initiates, develops and coordinates high quality, international scientific research in the Antarctic and on the role of the Antarctic region in the Earth system. SCAR also provides objective and independent scientific advice to the Antarctic Treaty System Consultative Parties and other organizations on issues of science and conservation affecting the management of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. In support of this dual mission, SCAR has been developing capacity for international data management amongst its member nations since 1992. In order to effectively implement programs, policies and procedures, and activities to fulfil these roles, SCAR must clearly map out a Data and Information Management Strategy for the future. This document is the next logical step in this process.

The committee in SCAR responsible for all aspects of data and information management is the Standing Committee on Antarctic Data management (SCADM). Data and information are valuable and irreplaceable resources. In the pursuit of many science objectives (especially those of a pan-Antarctic nature) it is necessary to use data and information collected by scientists from many countries. SCAR recognizes the critical and essential importance of the stewardship of data and information within national and international programs and of its accessibility by the international Antarctic scientific community. This management is not an “add-on” or an additional task. It is a fundamental aspect of modern earth system science and essential to addressing complex questions about how our planet works and how it will respond in the future.

This Strategy’s vision is to build an Antarctic Data Management System (ADMS), capable of supporting inter-disciplinary Antarctic science and SCAR activities within the Antarctic Treaty System. The ADMS should be viewed as a science enabler. Through a range of individual activities SCAR is already making progress towards achieving this vision. But much more can be achieved. The likelihood of realising the desired goal will be greater if appropriate strategic foundations are put in place to enable better coordination of individual and often disconnected efforts. These strategic foundations should encompass:

1. Policy, Leadership, Coordination and Governance: better articulated governance arrangements and strong leadership, suitable for driving the development of a distributed, but loosely federated, shared infrastructure. This requires development of a SCAR Data Policy that stipulates the norms that SCAR members should adopt with respect to data sharing and access; data management planning; and establishment of National Antarctic Data Centres (NADCs). Recognising that dedicated leadership is essential for driving development of any shared infrastructure, SCAR members should consider seconding appropriately trained professionals to the SCAR Secretariat and/or assist with raising external funds to support infrastructure development positions. To strengthen existing components of the ADMS, opportunities for partnering arrangements should be explored between SCAR data management groups and those institutions involved in the reformation of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Data Exchange (IODE) and ICSU World Data Centre Systems. If the ADMS ultimately expands more through partnerships with these types of global systems than through an expansion of the SCAR NADC network, it may then be prudent to review the role, membership and function of SCADM.
2. Cultural Change and Incentives: fostering a culture willing to share and collaborate on data management related activities. Data sharing between SCAR scientists is highly patchy both within and between member countries. Data citation systems are being touted as a mechanism to foster improved data sharing practices between scientists. The Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) has been trialling approaches to data citation. SCAR could formally partner with SCOR in piloting such a system within its NADCs. More could also be done to build an ADMS and to change cultural practices if SCAR’s peak data groups harnessed their collective capabilities to garner funding from external sources. Additionally, more money would be available for scientific data management if SCAR educated funding sources about the need for data management to be an explicitly funded component of supported projects.
3. Leveraging Resources and Systems: leveraging existing SCAR and non-SCAR systems, capabilities and resources and supplementing these where there are obvious deficiencies (the primary purpose of such leveraging is to create a network of designated permanent data archives capable of the long-term management and publication of all types of SCAR related data). The number of NADCs is low relative to the number of national SCAR Members. Of the NADCs that do exist, only a few have significant capabilities. A functional ADMS will be difficult to develop solely through an expansion of the NADC network. SCAR should identify a small number of existing and complementary data access networks with which to affiliate and then promote NADC involvement in these networks. By “affiliating”, rather than building from scratch, SCAR can expand its ADMS at minimal cost and at the same time achieve greater interoperability with other networks. It is also important that SCAR’s peak data management groups (ie. SCADM and the Standing Committee on Antarctic Geographic Information – SCAGI) work more closely together in pursuing common goals. Now that the distinction between managing and publishing spatial and non-spatial data is disappearing, consideration might be given in the future to amalgamating SCADM and SCAGI.
4. Standards and Interoperability: agreement on, and implementation of, standards that support the interoperation of technology platforms and data transport protocols. In particular, development or adoption of standards to describe and encode data objects, equipment, processing techniques and instruments that ultimately function to permit data integration and aggregation. A key component of the ADMS is the Antarctic Master Directory (AMD) metadata system. It is therefore crucial that SCAR works closely with the AMD host organisation (i.e. the GCMD) to help determine the functionality of future iterations of this technology platform. Equally important is the need to recognise that SCAR science covers highly diverse data types and data management requirements. The ADMS must be geared to meeting this diversity of needs. To achieve this goal, further enhancement of the ADMS should be under-pinned by developing an implementation roadmap.
5. Outreach and Guidance: education, outreach and guidance on all facets of the systems operation, protocols and functions. Growing the number of NADCs and improving the capabilities of those that exist could be achieved using a more formalised training and mentoring campaign. Both SCADM and SCAGI should improve their communication mechanisms and mediums.

Much of the data management that currently occurs within SCAR science projects is conducted under circumstances outside of the influence of either of SCAR’s peak data management coordinating groups. The network of NADCs on which the SCAR ADMS should be founded therefore needs to be expanded and become interdependent with other, successful thematic and global data networks, that are currently being patronised by SCAR research programs or which have the potential to add value to SCAR science. Several opportunities exist to more closely align SCAR data management with large international data management facilities and networks (notably the ICSU WDCs, IODE, the WMO Information System [WIS], the IPY Data and Information Service [IPYDIS] and the Polar Information Commons[PIC] initiative), all of which conversely need to align themselves with scientific data sources (such as SCAR).

To realise its strategic data management vision SCAR needs to develop a roadmap to action recommendations in this report in the form of a Data and Information Strategy Implementation Plan.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP13: Report on the SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Geographic Information (SC-AGI)

Community Projects

The SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Geographic Information is responsible for five SCAR Community Projects. These are:

1. SCAR Antarctic Digital Database
2. SCAR Composite Gazetteer Antarctica
3. SCAR Map Catalogue
4. SCAR Feature Catalogue
5. SCAR Symbology

In addition to those projects, national institutions develop products that the wider Antarctic community benefit from, for example the Landsat Image Mosaic Antarctica (LIMA) developed by the United States Geodetic Survey.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP14: Report from the SCAR Delegation to XXXII ATCM in Baltimore, USA, April 2009

Report from the SCAR Delegation to XXXII ATCM in Baltimore, USA

April 6-17, 2009

Introduction

The XXXII Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) took place in Baltimore, MD, USA at the Baltimore Convention Centre from 6^th to 17^th April 2009. In parallel with the start of the Committee on Environmental Protection (CEP) XII on April 6^th, a joint session between the ATCPs and the Arctic Council was held at the US State Department in Washington. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and the President of the Arctic Council addressed the joint meeting. It featured the endorsement of a joint Ministerial Declaration on the International Polar Year 2007-2008 (IPY) (Appendix 1). The session was followed by an afternoon presentation on the science of IPY by US scientists at the US National Academy’s headquarters, in Washington, DC.

The SCAR Delegation consisted of C Summerhayes (Head of Delegation), C Kennicutt, M Sparrow, and K Lochte, who presented the SCAR lecture. Several of the Members of SCAR’s Standing Committee on the Antarctic Treaty System (SC-ATS) attended the meeting (C Kennicutt, H Miller, S Marenssi, J Shears), which facilitated decision making on key issues concerning SCAR’s presentations to the CEP and the ATCM. SCATS Chair S Chown sent his regrets for being unable to attend. SCAR V-Ps R Ravindra and S Marenssi were also present.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP15: SCAR Fellowship Programme Recommendations

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP16: SCAR Plans for Capacity Building, Education and Training (CBET)

Contents

1. Introduction
2. The SCAR Website and Social Networking Groups
3. The SCAR Fellowships
4. Early Career Scientists
5. A SCAR Visiting Professor Scheme
6. The CBET Committee
7. Other Opportunities

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP17: SCAR Recognition and Appreciation

EXCOM is asked to consider and approve ways of improving the impact of SCAR rewards that recognize and appreciate the contribution of scientists from among the SCAR community.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP18: Revised Rules of Procedure for Subsidiary Groups

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP19: Revised Staff Conditions

Overview

With the change of SCAR to a UK Company Limited by Guarantee and a UK Charity it is now necessary to ensure that SCAR staff are employed in accordance with the requirements of UK employment law [this would be necessary anyway, even without those changes, due to recent changes in UK employment law].  With the assistance of the SCAR Secretariat, the Vice-President for Finance, Ad Huiskes, used this change as an opportunity to investigate SCAR Secretariat salaries and conditions, and to try to ensure that these are as close as possible to that of an equivalent university or institute [it has been SCAR policy to adopt University of Cambridge salary levels, given that Scott Polar R

esearch Institute is part of the University, and indeed some past SCAR staff have been employed on the university payroll, though that is no longer the case as it attracts large (100%) overheads].

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP20: Report on the Organisation of the XXX SCAR Science Week, 2008

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP21: Guidelines for Future Delegates Meetings

Goal: By 2010 streamline the Delegates’ Meeting, engage the delegates in the meeting in a more substantive way, engender excitement about SCAR’s mission and work, and establish high-quality Antarctic science as a central theme in the meetings.

The Issue: The Delegates gather for only 3 days once every two years. It is imperative that this time be spent on substantive discussions; that time is available for consultation; that Delegates feel informed and understand what it is they are approving, and that “buy-in” to SCAR decisions is ensured. Delegates need to leave the meeting feeling they have had apple opportunity to make their views and concerns known and that they understand what they have agreed to and authorized SCAR to implement in the intersessional period.

The adoption of an interactive model for how we function, while embracing a forward-looking and more efficient approach to conducting SCAR business, is an essential next step in the evolution of SCAR and should engage the Delegates more actively and stimulate more substantive discussion at Delegates meetings. This is imperative since

the SCAR member nations are our first-order customers as they finance the organization. The future of SCAR is critically dependent on its member nations feeling that they are getting value for their investments, which go far beyond payment of the membership fee, including, but not limited to: funding of travel for national representatives to attend meetings, hosting SCAR meetings, support of national committees, provision of travel grants for non-national representatives (e.g, students, early career scientists, and researchers) to attend SCAR meetings, occasional ad hoc funding of specific SCAR activities (i.e., IPY double fee contributions, fellowships, etc.), funding of research that supports SCAR science and, most of all, the often unrecognized salary support for the time spent by the many volunteers that SCAR is critically dependent on to conduct its business. In these times of rising costs for all national programs the benefits of this investment are under greater scrutiny than ever before in SCAR’s history. It is this investment that enables the relatively modest amounts of capital SCAR manages to be leveraged many times over.

The Objective: Working Paper WP10 proposes improvements to the way in which the SSGs conduct their business and report to the Delegates. This paper (WP21) addresses how the Delegates meeting itself might be improved to increase the engagement of individual representatives in the decision-making process.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP22: Revised Guidelines for Hosting SCAR Meetings

Prologue

This document will assist potential and selected hosts of the biennial SCAR meetings:

• to understand what hosting the meetings entail,
• to assess costs associated with hosting the meetings and plan accordingly, and
• provide checklists to assist in preparing for the meetings.

Introduction

The offer to host a SCAR meeting is made by a National Committee and demonstrates a country’s commitment to SCAR and the international Antarctic science community to ensure that the meetings are successful. Hosting of the biennial SCAR meetings is a substantial pledge by the host country to provide the necessary financial and human resources to plan and stage the meetings.  A well-organized meeting is most likely if the hosts have had experience in organizing meetings of similar size and complexity (the first three Open Science Conferences were attended by between 700 and 1200 participants). These guidelines have been prepared to inform National Committees when they are contemplating issuing an invitation to host the meetings and as a guide once an invitation is accepted by SCAR.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP23: A System for In-House Management of SCAR Meetings

Background:

At XXX SCAR in 2008 the Executive Director presented Working Paper WP 29 to stimulate discussion on standardising the arrangements for OSC, on lowering the cost of the registration fee, and on the frequency of OSCs. Delegates agreed this was a very important topic that merited extended debate. WP 29 suggested that we need to examine a number of different systems to find one that would work for us with little or no adaptation. Delegates agreed that it would be difficult, starting in 2009, to spin up a system ready for the OSC in 2010. 2012 is a more realistic target.

Delegates agreed with the principle that SCAR could hire someone to manage the meeting registration and associated arrangements provided that this was self-sustaining and cost neutral. They also agreed that the registration fee could be set in such a way as to allow some small ‘profit’ element that could be used to invest in travel to the OSC by young scientists.

The progress report below addresses these issues.

In addition, Delegates agreed with the paper’s suggestion that full costings should be obtained from AWI, AAD and AARI so that it was clear to what extent the host organisation subsidised the three previous meetings in cash or in-kind (e.g. with staff), and how the registration fee had been used, and that these costings should form the basis for a revised paper for EXCOM in 2009.

That work has not been done because there simply has not been time and because looking backward in that way seemed less relevant in the context of trying to find a workable in-house system for the future.

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP24ai: Financial Statement for 2007 – Full

SCAR EXCOM 2009 WP24aii: Financial Statement for 2007 – Summary