UAF’s Vladimir Romanovsky named as NGEE Arctic new Chief Scientist

The NGEE Arctic project, sponsored by the Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research, is entering Phase 2 of its decade-long investment to improve the representation of high-latitude processes in Earth System Models. Larry D. Hinzman served as Chief Scientist for the project in Phase 1 (2012 to 2015), but recently stepped down from that role given his new responsibilities as Interim Vice Chancellor, Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Vladimir Romanovsky, Professor of Geophysics at the UAF Geophysical Institute, has worked with the NGEE Arctic team in Barrow, AK since 2012. His expanded role as Chief Scientist comes at a time when the DOE-sponsored team, comprised of more than 125 scientists from Oak Ridge, Brookhaven, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and several strategic universities, add field sites on the Seward Peninsula to their research portfolio. These sites will complement continued research on the North Slope and allow an expanded emphasis of critical ecosystem-climate feedbacks as influenced by permafrost thaw, disturbance, and vegetation dynamics, including shrub expansion.