NSF 03-048, Arctic Research in the United States, Volume 17, Spring
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This document has been archived. The Russian–American Initiative for Land–Shelf Environments in the Arctic Contributions to Arctic System Science This article was prepared The Russian–American Initiative for Land– projects involving both U.S. and Russian scien- by Lee W. Cooper, Shelf Environments (RAISE) is unique among tists have been initiated. Summaries of many of Department of Ecology research program and project components sup- these projects, both Russian and U.S. based, are and Evolutionary Biolo- ported by the National Science Foundation’s also available at http://arctic.bio.utk.edu/#raise, gy, University of Tennes- see, with assistance from (NSF) Arctic System Science Program (ARCSS). and a summary in written form has also been RAISE principal RAISE project implementation has been explicitly recently published. investigators. international, and the program is the only cooper- Despite this progress, the scale of research ative, bilateral research program supported by supported through RAISE has been limited by the both NSF and its Russian counterpart agency, the complexities of undertaking bilateral research in Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR). the Russian Federation. Changing political reali- The goal of RAISE is to facilitate bilateral ties in both the United States and Russia, eco- (U.S.–Russian) research at the land–sea margin nomic dislocations that have affected the abilities in the Eurasian Arctic, focusing on the scientific of Russian scientists to pursue their vocations, challenges of environmental change in human logistical challenges in the Russian Arctic, and and biological communities and related physical the lack of high-level governmental agreements and chemical systems. The RAISE program has between the Russian and U.S. governments that historically been one of the key ARCSS mecha- would facilitate bilateral research have resulted nisms for supporting global change research in RAISE projects that are largely scientist-to- beyond the relatively small portion of the Arctic scientist in implementation. Although this orienta- shared by the United States. A more general objec- tion towards supporting individual projects has tive of RAISE specifically has been to facilitate been effective, there have also been no large-scale cooperation between Russian and U.S. scientists multi-investigator projects such as Surface Heat that would improve knowledge of Arctic system Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) and Shelf–Basin science on both land and sea in the large portion Interactions (SBI) that have been coordinated of the Arctic that is in the Russian Federation. through the Ocean–Ice–Atmosphere Interactions The scientific justifications and bases for the (OAII) Management Office of ARCSS. RAISE umbrella of research priorities were iden- The lack of coordinated projects within RAISE tified by participants in three international work- may be ending. Many projects recently funded shops held in Columbus, Ohio; St. Petersburg, through the Arctic Community-wide Hydrological Russia; and Arlington, Virginia in 1995 and in Analysis and Monitoring Program (Arctic- annual follow-up meetings of RAISE investiga- CHAMP) are utilizing research priorities identi- tors and the RAISE International Science Steering fied in the RAISE prospectus and involve coordi- Committee over the past eight years. The results nated teams of Russian and U.S. investigators of these scientific deliberations are available from studying runoff impacts from Eurasian rivers on the RAISE web site (http://arctic.bio.utk.edu/ the climate-linked thermohaline processes in the RAISE/index.html) or from the RAISE project world ocean. Also, science planning is underway office at the Department of Ecology and Evolu- for a coordinated Land–Shelf Interactions (LSI) tionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. initiative that has a goal of providing a coordinat- Since the publication of the RAISE prospectus ed, interdisciplinary research opportunity in the that resulted from these science planning efforts, Arctic that would focus on the coastal zone and a number of land- and sea-based, remotely would support land-, river-, and sea-based sensed, or archived data recovery research researchers who would take advantage of coordi- 33 these changes in the past. Within the past decade, RAISE researchers have contributed several key insights to our understanding of past Arctic climate and its relationship to biogeochemical processes at high latitudes and the processes that link with the world climate system. One uncertainty in interglacial paleoclimatic reconstruction is the extent to which ice sheets were present at the time of the Last Glacial Maxi- mum (LGM) in northeastern Siberia and their extent in general in the Northern Hemisphere. The presence or absence of such ice sheets geographi- cally is important for validating atmospheric glo- bal circulation models during both glacial and interglacial periods, which depend on accurate sea-level reconstructions and accurate estimates of glacial ice volume. Knowledge of the extent of glacial ice is also important for evaluating global ice balance and the mechanisms for transitions between glacial and interglacial periods. RAISE- related research efforts in particular have been important for defining the limits of glaciation over a wide geographical region of the Russian Arctic. Inferences for significant glacial ice volumes in the Wrangel Island and East Siberian Sea region at the time of the last glacial maximum nated logistical capabilities that would otherwise have been directly tested during field studies by be unavailable. This new research initiative also RAISE investigators on Wrangel Island. Studies has a goal of transcending the traditional geomor- using the cosmogenic radionuclides 10Be and phic boundaries separating marine and terrestrial 26Al, which provide a time history of atmospheric lines of inquiry in Arctic system science. Devel- exposure, and field studies on the island that have opment of the initiative and identification of key documented the paucity of glacial geomorpholog- research priorities are being coordinated by the ical features (such as landforms, moraines, and RAISE/LSI Project Office at the University of glacial erratics) have led the RAISE investigators Tennessee. to conclude that Wrangel Island remained free of Despite the relatively modest financial invest- extensive glacial ice during the LGM. The lack of ment in the RAISE effort, the initiative has been moisture caused by the continental climate on the effective in coordinating bilateral U.S.–Russian emergent Bering Land Bridge is the most likely research of importance to understanding and pre- reason for limited ice in this part of the Arctic dicting the impacts of global change in the Arctic. during the LGM. In the following discussion, research highlights Additional work on this project is document- from selected RAISE projects are outlined, with ing Pleistocene marine transgressions on Wrangel time scales of interest in the past and present, as Island. The Tundrovayan Transgression (459,000– well as predictive modeling for future environ- 780,000 years ago) is represented by raised mental change. marine deposits and landforms that are 15–41 m above the current sea level and up to 18 km inland. Evidence of a high sea level between RAISE Research Highlights 64,000 and 73,000 years ago is preserved in Paleoclimate deposits and landforms 4–7 m above the current sea level in the Krasny Flag valley on Wrangel One of the key aspects for understanding the Island. These deposits and landforms were global environment impacts of environmental mapped, dated, and described using amino acid change in the Arctic is the scope and scale of geochronology, radiocarbon, optically stimulated 34 luminescence, electron spin resonance, oxygen Zemlya Archipelago during the LGM and earlier isotopes, micropaleontology, paleomagnetism, glacial periods. This project closely complements and soil grain sizes. The marine deposits reflect the marine efforts in the adjacent Kara Sea, dis- past sea levels and have not been uplifted. The cussed above, and will help constrain the extent, presence of marine deposits that predate the LGM volume, and timing of ice sheets in the northern also indicates that neither Wrangel Island nor the Kara Sea and adjacent land areas. Preliminary East Siberian or Chukchi Seas experienced exten- stratigraphic and geomorphic data from a first sive glaciation over the last 64,000 years. field season on Severnaya Zemlya in the summer In a parallel RAISE-supported effort, the extent of 2002 provide evidence for three Late Quater- of Arctic ice sheets during the LGM is also being nary glaciations on southern October Revolution studied in the Kara and Barents Sea region using Island. Significant isostatic depression associated sediment coring and seismic profiling. The extent with at least two of these glaciations caused sub- of glaciation here is an issue of intense debate, sequent deposition of marine sediments and the involving a question of whether the West Siberian formation of raised beaches at altitudes up to rivers have been blocked by glaciers from dis- approximately 130 m above current sea level, charging into the Arctic Ocean. Characterization suggesting regional glaciation, not just expansion of subbottom sediment structure and stratigraphy of local glaciers. Ice directional indicators (glacio- is providing initial supporting evidence that major tectonic structures, clast fabrics, and striations) Siberian river runoff