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What We Do
The Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC) is dedicated to the encouragement of research and educational activities pertaining to Alaska's North Slope, the adjacent portions of the Arctic Ocean, and in Chukotka (Чуко́тка), Russia.
BASC is a community-based organization dedicated to helping make closer contacts between scientists and community members.
We provide logistical support for Arctic research and strive to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between scientific researchers and the people of the North Slope.
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Attention prospective researchers in northern Alaska or Russia
You have a choice about how you acquire logistics support when proposing to the National Science Foundation.
When you propose to NSF you have a choice about how to arrange logistics. You may include estimated logistics costs in your proposal budget, or you may indicate that you would like NSF's commercial contractor to provide your logistics support.
BASC would like to provide your logistics support. If you decide to include your field logistics costs in your own proposal budget, please contact BASC. We will work with you to estimate requirements and costs. Of course, if you include your costs in your own budget, you are free to contract directly with other organizations. We believe BASC will offer the services and value that you need. In Russia, BASC works with our sister Native organization, the Chukotka Science Support Group.
Research proposals to NSF for field projects in Alaska or in Chukotka, Russia might include the following statements:
In the text of your NSF proposal:
"We have discussed our logistics, permitting and field outreach needs with the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC) and include a letter and cost estimate from Glenn Sheehan, BASC Executive Director. These logistical costs are included in our proposed budget, as we will work directly with BASC for logistics facilitation. BASC is a community based nonprofit organization that has been providing logistics support to science since 1996. BASC is located in the American Arctic in Barrow, Alaska."
In the Budget Justification of your NSF proposal:
"We have discussed our logistics, permitting and field outreach needs with the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC) and include a letter and estimate from Glenn Sheehan, BASC Executive Director. Those costs include..."
We encourage Principal Investigators to
discuss logistics needs with BASC prior to submitting their proposals
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NOTE FOR ALL OTHER RESEARCHERS proposing work in Alaska or Chukotka, Russia
BASC is pleased to provide logistics, permitting and field outreach facilitation for all researchers. Please contact us early in the proposal writing process for assistance in identifying field requirements and scoping your needs. BASC currently works with many U.S. and international agencies and organizations, as well as with commercial concerns. These include NASA, NSF, USFWS, BLM, DOE, DeptEd, and universities and other organizations like the Max Planck Institute (Germany), Living Earth (United Kingdom) and Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (USA).
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Sign up to Receive Notice of Schoolyard Saturday and Evening Science Talks
BASC sponsors Saturday and evening outreach programs weekly or more often. If you would like to be notified by email of upcoming outreach presentations, please sign up through the following link: http://groups.google.com/group/bascfriends. You will need to create a free Google account to receive e-mail from the group to whatever address you would like. Thank you for your interest!
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While Receiving Support from BASC, Sign up for Announcements
BASC uses an electronic mailing list to communicate announcements related to BASC. This is not a discussion list. We ask that researchers subscribe and remain subscribed while in Barrow or otherwise receiving support from BASC. If you know someone who would like to receive mail on the list, please direct them to http://groups.google.com/group/basc-announce, where they may request an invitation. Subscribers will need to create a free Google account to receive e-mail from the group to whatever address is subscribed.
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Barrow Visitor's Guide
Barrow, Alaska - A Visitor's Guide includes maps with easy-to-read road names, a key that includes the location of advertisers and sponsors, photos by local photographers, and information about the community including safety resources. The Visitor's Guide is © 2009-2010 Touch Alaska Interactive Media, Inc.
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Longtime Barrow researcher Hajo Eicken and associates have produced a book of wide interest on sea ice in the Arctic, entitled Field Techniques for Sea Ice Research. Most of the field research was facilitated off Barrow by BASC. Browse BASC's Featured Book store on Amazon.com to find this and other books of interest. A random selection is displayed below. To suggest other books, please contact us.
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Pacific Water Inflow Study with an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Dr. Al Plueddemann's project to study water flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific Ocean using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) successfully tested the REMUS in March 2010. Linked here and at left are the slides from a talk he gave through the Schoolyard Saturday program during his visit. The talk explains reasons for and possible effects of the inflow and some results from the study.
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Snowmachines for Science
Robin Mongoyak's prize winning business plan for taking tourists on off road adventures in Barrow, Alaska, has grown into something much more ambitious. He has started a new company, Kiita ATV Tours. With help from Alaska Growth Capital (AGC), Robin also is providing snowmachines to the world's researchers who flock to Barrow to study climate change, arctic flora and fauna, and dozens of other subjects. Read the full press release.
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Barrow Tide Gauge Data Available from NOAA
Our friends at JOA Surveys worked to install tide gauges at Barrow during 2008. The tide data from these gauges relative to an arbitrary datum are now available from the NOAA COPPS website.
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2010 Barrow Travel Opportunity from LTER and BASC
The Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network and BASC have funding available to support Barrow Young Researcher visits to Barrow. In turn, LTER and BASC are asking the recipient to work with BASC to arrange speaking engagements in North Slope Borough schools and through the Schoolyard Saturday project. More information is available here
. Image courtesy of and copyright Floyd Davidson.
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BASC Receives Grant
Thanks to the generosity of the Rasmuson Foundation and the thoughtfulness of our friend Bobbi Quintavell, BASC was awarded an unrestricted grant of $5,000 in January 2010. Click here (39K PDF)
or the logo at left to read the letter from the Rasmuson Foundation.
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Dr. Kenneth Toovak Remembered
"...a leader in community and intercultural collaboration with scientists at NARL..."
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Current Measurement System Installed
Chukchi currents mapped in Wainwright and Barrow.
The US Minerals Management Service and others have funded the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences to measure surface currents in the Chukchi Sea off Wainwright and Barrow.
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BASC benefactor's research efforts
Dr. John K. Hall hunts for asteroid impact in the Arctic.
Dr. Hall is also pursuing his own research interests in the Arctic. Wired magazine profiled the efforts of Hall and Kristofferson to find evidence of a massive asteroid strike. The 2008 paper in the Norwegian Journal of Geology is here. The abstract for the 2009 paper in The Leading Edge is here. Both articles may be downloaded from the Blodgett-Hall Polar Presence website.
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Make Your Own Maps!
See where research projects are located.
A status report from 2009 from the BAID-IMS project is available here (PDF 75KB). The status report gives an update on current efforts to integrate data sources and compares BAID-IMS to other systems. BAID-IMS allows users to access, view and interact with a wide range of spatial data and remotely sensed imagery focused on the Barrow region.
BAID-IMS covers 100km offshore north of Barrow, east to Deadhorse, west to Point Lay and south to the Brooks Range. The application includes over 100 data layers.
Users can employ standard Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to zoom, pan, measure distance, identify waypoints for uploading into Global Positioning Systems (GPS), query a range of attribute data layers and make and print their own maps.
For a brief overview of BAID-IMS and information on how to get help adding your project, see this brochure.
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Georeferenced Aerial Photography of Alaska's North Coast
Over 3000 digital stills taken between 7 and 10 August 2006 by aerial photographic
survey from Nulavik (about ~60 km southwest of Barrow) to the U.S./Canadian border, along with a GIS shapefile
that allows the photos to be viewed interactively with mapping software,
have been published as USGS Data Series 436.
This project was part of the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program's
National Assessment of Shorline Change and was supported logistically by BASC.
Gibbs, A.E., and Richmond, B.M., 2009. Oblique aerial photography of
the Arctic coast of Alaska, Nulavik to Demarcation Point, August
7-10, 2006: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 436, 6 p., 4 databases
http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/436/.
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Satellite Tracking of Western Arctic Bowhead Whales
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation Marine Mammal Program maintains a web page with news on tagged bowhead whales ( Balaena mysticetus).
During the week of 20 September 2008, a bowhead tagged in Canada (PTT 37233) has returned to Barrow from Wrangel Island. One of the whales tagged in Barrow (PTT 37236) is currently along the coast of Chukotka, south of Wrangel Island, and the other (PTT 37235) is currently heading towards Wrangel Island.
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DEW Line Passage: A voyage along the Arctic coast by sailing canoe
Stacey Fritz and Ryan Tinsley visited all varieties of Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites (active, long-abandoned, and undergoing clean up) to explore the northernmost outposts of the Cold War. Almost 200 photos can be seen at tundradaisy.org. Stacey and Ryan sailed into Barrow on 6 September 2008, two months after leaving Fort McPherson, on the Dempster Highway in the Inuvik Region of the Northwest Territories in Canada, and almost one month after leaving Kaktovik, North Slope, Alaska.
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Hopson Middle School Students learn from BASC
Dr. Steven J. Hastings worked with Ms. Greene's 8th grade class at Hopson Middle School in Barrow during September 2008. Here are some pictures from their field trip to study thaw and soil temperature.
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Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists
Visit the Exploratorium's Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists, where you'll meet penguin biologists, glaciologists, cosmologists, geologists, and marine scientists working in Antarctica and the Arctic. Researchers working in Barrow and elsewhere have been given cameras and blogs and asked to document their adventures, in real time, so you can follow their research, ask questions, and share in their discoveries as they occur. This experiment, in celebration of the International Polar Year (2007-08), gives you an up-close-and-personal look at research in extreme environments through the thoughts and experiences of the scientists working there.
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Field techniques in interdisciplinary sea-ice research
University of Alaska Fairbanks and Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan conducted a sea-ice field course in Barrow during May 2008.
The hands-on introduction to the principal field techniques employed in sea-ice studies of an interdisciplinary (geophysical-biogeochemical) nature focuses on sea ice as an instructive example of the close intertwining between ocean, ice and biosphere processes and humans in the polar regions. The use of the ice cover by different stakeholders in the context of research program design will receive particular attention. In the spirit of the International Polar Year, the instructor team includes recognized experts from a number of different nations who will lead different course modules. See the web site for further details.
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Polar Gateways 2008 Conference
The conference "Polar Gateways of Understanding to Solar System Exploration for IPY-IHY" took place January 23 - 29 2008 in Barrow, hosted by BASC and organized by NASA.
The Polar Gateways conference connected electronically to Arctic sites in Canada, Greenland, and Fennoscandia. The core of the meeting program was a series of science highlight presentations from the connected sites, covering topics from polar and IPY-IGY history, to the present changing polar environments, to future exploration and eventual habitation of analogous environments in the solar system.
Further information is available at polargateways2008.gsfc.nasa.gov. A photo gallery is available. A series of podcast recordings is available from NASA. Web quality video of the NASA program FROM THE SUN TO THE STARS - The New Science of Heliophysics is available, including a transcript.
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Bringing the Songs Home: Columbia University Begins Musical Heritage Repatriation Project in the North Slope
In November 2007, BASC's Outreach Program supported a weeklong visit by Aaron Fox, of Columbia University, and Chie Sakakibara, of Oklahoma University. Chie and Aaron were in Barrow to discuss and plan for the repatriation of recordings made in Barrow in 1946 of Iñupiat music by collector Laura Boulton, now owned by Columbia University. Remarkably, the songs Boulton recorded in 1946 have come back to life in the community, pointing to a bright future for the repatriation project. Read the full story by clicking the picture at left.
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U.S. Coast Guard Begins Flights to the North Pole from Barrow
On Thursday 25 October 2007 the U.S. Coast Guard inaugurated a series of C-130 flights from Barrow to the North Pole. Working with BASC, the Coast Guard included whaling captain Charles Hopson on the flight. Mr. Hopson has spent many years working on floating ice islands in the Arctic Ocean assisting with scientific research projects.
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Sea Ice Images from the Alaska Ocean Observing System
Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS), and BASC, the AOOS Arctic Ocean Coordinator, have responded to requests by northern residents by making available satellite acquired imagery of sea ice using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Click the picture at left for draft results, courtesy of NASA and AOOS.
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Geospatial Data for the Barrow Peninsula
A broadly collaborative effort has resulted in the creation and distribution of high-quality geospatial datasets to benefit research concentrated near Barrow. The imagery and data can be used in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
The data will provide a long-lasting, common base for orthorectifying and georegistering other GIS data and imagery, and will establish a temporal baseline for decades of change-detection studies.
The high-resolution imagery and terrain models were made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation's program for Arctic Research Support and Logistics (NSF Award OPP-0224071), with support also from the Arctic System Science Program for the ARCSS Data Coordination Center (ADCC).
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Chukotka Science Support Group
The Chukotka Science Support Group section of the BASC Website is now available. In both English and Russian, this section outlines the services, people, and land that make Chukotka a great place to do research.
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Guidelines for Improved Cooperation between Arctic Researchers and Northern Communities
Download this document from ARCUS, the Arctic Research Consortium of the US, by clicking on the cover (left).
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Photo Album
Browse our photo album of researchers, animals, history, and the excitement that is Barrow.
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Questions or concerns with this website? Please contact us.
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