Message from the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Committee:
Recommendations for Successful Arctic System Science
For more information, contact:
Helen Wiggins, Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS)
Email: helen [at] arcus.org
For more information on the ARCSS Program, go to:
NSF's ARCSS Website, click on the 'Arctic System Science (ARCSS)
Program' link at: http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=ARC.
ARCUS' ARCSS Website:
http://www.arcus.org/arcss/index.html
This message from the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Committee summarizes
recommendations for successful planning and development of arctic system
science. This will be the final communication from the ARCSS Committee
as the committee has been dissolved; ARCSS-relevant science planning
activities will be merged with activities of the Study of Environmental
Arctic Change (SEARCH) program (SEARCH website at:
http://www.arcus.org/search/index.php).
BACKGROUND AND ARCSS HISTORY
The ARCSS program started in 1989 and has consistently defined the state
of the art in integrated, interdisciplinary system science. It has
produced an enormous amount of societally-relevant research, trained a
new generation of scholars committed to multidisciplinary and system
science, and launched important public education initiatives, including
newspaper stories, radio pieces, and TV documentaries. It is a record of
which ARCSS scientists and agency program managers can be proud.
A major reason for these successes has been the development of a strong
and collaborative scientific community that works well with the funders
in defining initiatives and in supporting highly integrative and
cutting-edge research. We believe that maintaining and enhancing that
community integration is the key to future successful Arctic System
Science research.
At the time that the ARCSS program was started, global change was a
concern in the scientific community but less so for the public, for whom
changes a century out had limited relevance. This has
changed--projections now suggest the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free during
summer within decades, the lifespan of adults living today. The pace of
environmental change appears to be accelerating, with some of the most
visible and evocative changes occurring in the Arctic. These include not
only sea ice loss, but changes in vegetation, animal populations and
migrations, and how people live in and use the Arctic and its resources
and ecosystem services.
Understanding these accelerating changes calls for new cycles of
increasingly integrated and interdisciplinary research. Additionally,
over the last several years, the SEARCH program has grown into a major
inter-agency initiative that encompasses diverse aspects of arctic
system science, aspects that synergize with "traditional" ARCSS
initiatives. Thus, future research initiatives should integrate across
programs and domains and should aggressively integrate work on human
responses and drivers into the overall program.
Together these drivers call for new approaches to organize and manage
arctic research. In recent years, planning has struggled to keep up with
the science. The processes we had in place were linear--community
visioning led to science plans and proposed programs, which led to NSF
programs and Announcements of Opportunity, only then would funding flow
to researchers; the process could take many years between initial ideas
and new data. We believe that NSF and the science community need to
reenergize the planning process but that process should be more nimble.
Broad visioning, specific program development, and actual research
programs should occur interactively and in parallel.
Over the years we have learned a number of lessons about how to
accomplish world-leading interdisciplinary research. We believe the key
is building integrated research communities, regardless of the
mechanisms used in developing and implementing specific research
programs.
THE PLANNING PHASE: STRONG SYSTEM SCIENCE NEEDS STRONG
COMMUNITY SCIENCE PLANNING
Identifying the areas in which major investments will most effectively
advance understanding is a challenge--a challenge that requires
effective community engagement. Arctic science depends on a clear,
broad-based vision of scientific priorities--articulating the big
questions that require programmatic approaches to answering them.
The planning process works best when ideas and vision grow from the
community with support from NSF. Mechanisms should help develop
community vision and allow different groups to explore areas of common
interest and opportunity. Supporting this effort is a major task,
because the "Arctic Community" is, in fact, a collection of smaller
communities interacting to varying degrees. It takes time for different
groups to come together and learn each other's language and thinking.
These relationships are fragile and require nurturing.The planning process should be open and transparent. Whatever the
planning process, sub-communities should be engaged and empowered.
Groups may not get what they want, but they need to know they were
involved and they need to understand the decision-making process.
Planning should therefore be overseen by an entity that all stakeholders
see as focused on the good of the science without a vested interest in
the specific outcome. The community should also have confidence that
ideas with broad community consensus will help frame programmatic
priorities.
THE ACTION PHASE: DOING INTEGRATED PROGRAMMATIC SCIENCE
In our experience, several things are necessary to ensure that any group
of funded projects becomes a "program"--that is, something that adds up
to more than the sum of its parts.
1) Clear integrating goal
2) Long-term funding: 5 years
3) Conferences for PIs funded under an initiative to get together
4) Administrative support for initiatives
Clear Integrating Goal:
The most successful initiatives have often been those with an
integrating science goal that encompassed many fields. For example, the
Freshwater Initiative had a focal question of "Is the arctic hydrologic
cycle intensifying?" Such synthetic questions are powerful tools for
bringing researchers together.
Long Term Funding:
In the normal 3-year funding cycle, the first year is "ramping up," the
second is "being up," and the third is "wrapping up." It is hard to get
multiple projects to integrate into a synergistic program in 3 years. It
takes time to learn from each other, integrate ideas and needs from
other projects, and work together on cross-project synthesis. Five years
provides time to coordinate and work together. Many successful
cross-project synthesis papers were multi-year initiatives, with groups
talking about connections in the first year or two, coordinating data
analyses in the middle, and then developing the final synthesis in years
4 & 5, often finishing after the funding was over.
Thus, we encourage NSF to look at longer term funding on programs that
require multiple, independently funded projects, coordinated to achieve
the programmatic vision.
Coordinating Meetings Early and Often:
To create synergy among projects, the interval between funding
announcements and the first field deployments is a critical window of
opportunity. This is the time when people are thinking about their
projects and what they will actually do, when there is still flexibility
to make modest adjustments to coordinate among investigators. This is
also the opportunity to build team spirit and to get people feeling that
they aren't just the PI on a single project but a player on a larger
team with a larger overall goal. Having built that sense, regular
all-PI's meetings maintain and develop it. Individual groups can come
together to see the whole and to develop synergy, plan joint work, and
start conceiving of synthesis projects and papers.
Staff Support:
Planning coordination meetings and supporting initiatives requires staff
support--support that no individual group is likely to have budgeted in
their initial proposal. The higher the quality of the overall program
support, the more successful ultimate synthesis and integration are
likely to be. That support needs to come from people who have insight
into the scientific issues, but also into the organizational issues
involved in managing complex programs. In addition, having a postdoc or
scientist whose job it is to support integration and who is a co-author
on papers can also provide energy in ensuring that data sets are made
compatible, that they are made available, and that they are used.
Overall, we believe that these goals greatly facilitate producing the
integrative science that is necessary to substantively advance our
understanding of Arctic System Science and to answer questions that
society needs answered about the future state of that system. Two core
approaches--effective community involvement in defining objectives and
effective team building in carrying out the research--have been at the
heart of many of the ARCSS program's greatest successes, and we believe
that they transcend specific planning models.