Division of Arctic Sciences
Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program
CONTACTS
PROGRAM GUIDELINES
08-597 Program Solicitation
SYNOPSIS
The Arctic comprises a complex, tightly coupled system of air, ice, ocean, land, and people. The arctic system behaves in ways that we do not understand fully and has demonstrated the capacity for rapid and unpredictable change with global ramifications. Because the Arctic is pivotal to the dynamics of our planet, it is critical that we understand this complex and interactive system. The goal of the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) program is to answer the following question:
What do changes in the arctic system imply for the future?
To address this question, ARCSS must
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advance from a component understanding to a system understanding of the Arctic
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understand the behavior of the arctic system—past, present, and future
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understand the role of the Arctic as a component of the global system
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include society as an integral part of the arctic system
Building on a solid foundation of over a decade of observation, modeling and process studies, the ARCSS program is entering a synthesis-driven enterprise aimed at achieving system-level understanding of the Arctic. This may well include some of the kinds of component-level studies carried out before, but successful proposals will focus much more on the relationships among the pieces of the system than on the pieces themselves, and priorities will be set by the needs of the program in understanding the system. ARCSS will focus on achieving that system understanding.
The ARCSS program will
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integrate modeling, observational, process and paleoenvironmental studies
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develop a hierarchy of conceptual and quantitative models of the arctic system
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identify the most sensitive components and interactions driving arctic system behavior
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refine understanding of these key components and interactions
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strengthen the interactions between arctic system research and the broader Earth system science
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enhance two-way communication with stakeholders, decision-makers, and the public
ARCSS structure and focus
In recent years, ARCSS has had four active, more-or-less disciplinary components:
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Ocean/Atmosphere/Ice Interactions (OAII);
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Land/Atmosphere/Ice Interactions (LAII);
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Human Dimensions of the Arctic System (HARC), and
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Paleoenvironmental Arctic Sciences (PARCS), under which research activities have been developed.
PARCS proposals were considered within the Earth System History competition of the United States Global Change Research Program solicited under a different NSF announcement with separate submission dates.
The ARCSS program has undergone a major transition, led by the research community, away from these somewhat multidisciplinary organizing principles toward a new program that is integrated, more synthetic and truly interdisciplinary. Efforts will continue to extract as much as possible from research already performed and to capture the knowledge and experience achieved under these components. Replacing them will be a more pro-active ARCSS committee that will guide the system science thinking of the program, strive to develop more extensive connections to a broader array of disciplines for new ideas, and devote considerable attention to fostering ARCSS research efforts during their full life cycle from inception of idea through archival of data, synthesis of results, and communication of them to the community and public.
The ARCSS program supports most of its research through special targeted announcements developed in close cooperation among NSF, the ARCSS research community, and the ARCSS committee. However, ARCSS does support a small number of proposals received through this regular Arctic Research Opportunities announcement. Proposals to this general announcement of opportunity should put forth new ideas or efforts that do not fit well under more organized banners and that are smaller in scope than one might find in the specialized announcements of opportunity. As with any ARCSS proposal, these proposals must focus on advancing our knowledge of the arctic system. Moreover, with the exception of proposals that were specifically encouraged by a panel and NSF to resubmit to fill an essential gap in a particular ARCSS effort, this general arctic research announcement of opportunity should not normally be viewed as a mechanism to re-submit proposals that were declined in a targeted announcement, because those efforts are assembled as a package.
Information describing the current thinking of the ARCSS program is available on the ARCSS web site ( http://www.arcus.org/ARCSS/ARCSS.html) and via links found there. Future special announcements for funding opportunities in ARCSS will draw on and aggregate ideas presented in more than one individual disciplinary science plan. Examples of some of the kinds of ideas identified at the 2002 All Hands Meeting as being likely to have high priority in ARCSS in the coming years were:
However, as the ARCSS synthesis develops (http://www.arcus.org/ARCSS/synthesis_process.html), ARCSS is likely to work proactively with its constituent communities to develop these further, along with other new ideas.
Synthesis in ARCSS
The arctic system includes physical, chemical, geological, biological and cultural factors that respond to global change processes. Some models that predict the climatic response to global change show greater change in the Arctic than any other region. The predicted climatology, however, may not consider the largely unknown interannual to centennial variability in the Arctic. The historical and current human occupation of and dependence on resources in the Arctic, a region subject to possibly large environmental perturbations, makes it important that scientists understand better the interactions of the global and arctic systems. Therefore, the research supported in ARCSS extends beyond purely observational studies to those studies that predict and analyze the consequences of environmental variability and global change important to wise stewardship of renewable resources and development of decision and policy options for resource managers and residents.
To achieve this, ARCSS supports efforts that synthesize knowledge of how the arctic system works (including focus on the linkages between parts of the system) and better articulate the implications for the future. In general the program is trying to concentrate on understanding the relations among the components of the system and on leaving the detailed studies at the subcomponent level to other disciplinary programs.
Defining an ARCSS proposal
The interdisciplinary nature of system science can make it difficult to determine whether a proposal is or is not suitable for the ARCSS program. A good rule of thumb is if a proposal is focused on some piece of the system, then it is probably not a good fit to ARCSS, unless the understanding to be achieved about that piece is demonstrably essential to system-level understanding. A proposal suitable for competition in the ARCSS program will normally be expected to
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have a direct connection to and be essential to success of the ARCSS effort,
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fill a significant gap in our understanding of the arctic system that has been identified by the ARCSS synthesis,
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determine or investigate the important relations among components of the arctic system,
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help explain the range of states for the arctic system, or
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contribute significantly to our understanding of the structure and function of the arctic system through synthesis and further study.
To be successful, a proposal to the ARCSS program should have several or all of the above characteristics. Moreover ARCSS proposals must define explicitly how they contribute to system understanding. Failure to do so will result in the return of a proposal without review.
For more information on how a research proposal might best fit the themes of ARCSS, contact the program director. For information regarding field work for proposals with field components, please see Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions in the Arctic Research Opportunities announcement.
RELATED URLS
ARCSS Data Coordination Center
ARCSS web site
Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH)
THIS PROGRAM IS PART OF
Arctic Research Opportunities
Abstracts of Recent Awards Made Through This Program
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