Interdisciplinary Research Symposium

Monday, 29 October 2012, 5-7:30 PM

University of Alaska Fairbanks Wood Center Ballroom

Please join the University of Alaska Fairbanks Resilience and Adaptation Program for our first Interdisciplinary Research Symposium! The event is free and open to UAF students, faculty, the public, or anyone interested in interdisciplinary research and Arctic issues. The event includes a student poster session, keynote speaker with extended question and answer session, and light food and drinks.

5:00-6:00 PM                        Student Poster Session

 

6:00-6:45 PM            Keynote Presentation: Oran R. Young, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara

Governance in Turbulent Times: Where is the Arctic going, and what should we do about it?

 

6:45-7:30 PM                        Panel Discussion and Question & Answer Session

Interdisciplinary Poster Session: 

UAF undergraduate or graduate students with interdisciplinary research projects or work that focuses on the topics of human-environmental relationships, conservation, sustainability, resilience, adaptation, vulnerability, and transformation are encouraged to bring a poster to share! Work from any stage in the research process is invited, and posters from previous conferences are welcome. Poster printing support is available to a limited number of students, and a $500 conference travel grant will be awarded to one participating student! 

To sign up for the poster session, please e-mail rap.students@gmail.com with your name, department, title of your poster and 1-2 sentence description. Let us know if you would like support for printing your poster. Someone will follow up with you with further information, but Posters must be hung between 4:30 and 5 PM on Monday. The travel grant will be awarded at the end of the keynote presentation (must be present to win). 

Keynote Presentation Description:

From Dr. Young: In this lecture, I argue that the Arctic treated as a socio-ecological system will experience increased volatility during the foreseeable future and that this development will heighten the need for governance to maintain the resilience of the system. I then turn to the development of a toolkit for those responsible for governance in turbulent times. In the process, I discuss the need for enhanced monitoring and reporting systems, the uses of simulation and scenarios to increase understanding of emergent properties in complex systems, the prospects for devising early warning indicators, approaches to decision making under uncertainty, and procedures to improve adaptiveness in volatile settings. What is needed to integrate these measures into a coherent package is a discourse that articulates the rationale for governance in turbulent times and provides guidance for those seeking to bring these tools to bear in addressing specific problems.

More information:

For questions or more information, please email rap.students@gmail.com.

This symposium is possible due to the generous support of the UAF Resilience and Adaptation Program, the UAF Graduate School, and the Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Activity program.