R&D and Alaska’s Natural Environment 11 Approach to Development of a Natural Environmental 11
A Common Need: Resource Assessment and Monitoring
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- Navigate this page:
- Strengthening and Maintaining the Health of State Research Institutions
- State Oversight.
- University of Alaska
- Marine Science and Fisheries
- Land Resource Management.
- Cold Regions Engineering
- Health and Biomedicine.
A Common Need: Resource Assessment and MonitoringEven before SJR 44 was written, many research organizations in the state had started to join forces to develop CAOS, the Coastal Alaska Observing System. As the work to develop this report proceeded, it became clear that the underlying needs that provided the impetus for the national Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), for which CAOS will be the Alaska regional segment, are equally applicable to many other Alaskan issues, in all four themes of our study. In that sense, it is interesting to examine the seven “societal goals” of IOOS in the context of the SJR44 charge, to simultaneously improve the state’s economy, environment, and human health:
With the exception of the work “marine”, these goals would appear to apply equally well to issues concerning land, atmosphere and space, natural resources, and people, and thus to our interests in infrastructure and economic development as well as the natural and human environment. With this thought in mind, as our study progressed, the concept of an overall Alaska Observing Network, or Alaska Resource Assessment Network, evolved. Further impetus to this construct was provided by the President’s Climate Change Research Program, promulgated for public comment in November 2002, which also called for integrated observing networks on a regional scale. As with IOOS, the thrust of CCRP, with its companion CCT(echnology)P, is for economic development, safety, and security in conjunction with preservation of environmental and human health values. Thus it began to appear that our idea was not only logical from the Alaskan perspective, but also could serve as a model for emulation in other parts of the nation. Further, although our proposed ‘strategy’ that incorporates maintenance of excellence and capacity building, partnerships and collaboration, long term monitoring networks coupled to process studies and predictive models, and improved information flow, was initially developed in the section on Natural Environment, the survey that led to this approach was also used by our group that was looking at Industry, with similar results. And, as we started to examine the needs for infrastructure and economic development, it became even more clear that both this strategy, and the accompanying Alaska Observing (or Resource Assessment) Network, were effective organizing principles for many of the issues in all four themes. Thus, the development of such a network has become a major recommendation from this report. Certainly it is not all that is required to meet state needs; however, it would appear to be a cornerstone for R&D in Alaska to meet a very wide range of them. Also, because developing such a Network will be a major effort that will require participation and contributions by numerous federal, state, private and industry groups throughout the state, it is simultaneously an effective mechanism for meeting the SJR44 charge to find ways to ensure that federal and state governments work together. Following the model set by CAOS, we suggest that the overall network be developed in segments, each focused on a particular theme or aspect of the environment. Land resource management, a terrestrial counterpart to CAOS, is one such logical segment. Another, we believe, should focus on sub-surface resources and characteristics. Oil and gas resources, methane hydrates, and minerals are an extremely important constituent of this segment; and while it is not expected that they will change sufficiently rapidly to require ‘monitoring’ in the same sense as, say, weather, nonetheless our industrial panel (via AETDL’s road mapping workshop) identified the need for much higher resolution definition and mapping of such geological resources. Further, there are some dynamic aspects of the subsurface environment – e.g. permafrost and tectonic processes which produce earthquakes and volcanoes – that do indeed require high resolution long term monitoring, process studies, data management, and models. Similarly, atmosphere and space, and humans (for purposes ranging from economics, to subsistence diet benefits, to health, to education) are additional logical ‘segments’ for the overall network. Similar analysis indicates that all 5 of these ‘in-situ’ monitoring ‘systems’ will need to be supported by satellite observations, and by archives (such as those in our museums and other physical repositories, e.g. of geological samples). Further, although for manageability it is logical to deal with each of these elements separately for purposes of development of the Network, they are obviously all closely interrelate, so boundaries between them must be loose, and the managerial mechanisms designed for each must work closely together. We depict this concept in the following figure. 
Strengthening and Maintaining the Health of State Research Institutions State agencies, many Alaska Native profit and non-profit corporations, a few small private institutions, some Alaskan companies, a number of NGOs, and even many borough and community governments conduct or participate in R&D to some degree. Several boards, commissions, councils, foundations and industry consortia in Alaska, notably the NPRB and EVOS Trustee Council, which participated in developing this report, sponsor or otherwise influence R&D. However the only “state research institutions,” in the sense of entities funded and chartered by the state specifically to conduct R&D, are UA and ASTF. Some actions within the purview of the state would assist all organizations in Alaska that conduct or sponsor R&D, including the federal agencies and commissions. We have discussed some of the deficiencies in Alaska’s R&D climate and capacity in earlier sections, and briefly address means to rectify them here. We then will discuss actions specific to the University. - State Oversight. Two consistent themes in this report are the lack of state prioritized needs and policies to guide R&D, and incoherence among ongoing efforts. We have stressed the need for the Administration and Legislature to provide coordination and oversight through an office or mechanism whose mandate includes the improvement and deployment of R&D in the state. This is an essential first step in addressing the SJR44 charge to strengthen state capabilities. - Facilities. Many branches of science require sophisticated analytical and experimental laboratories, and access to information and computational resources. While ARSC, UA libraries, and broad band access to the web may adequately address the latter, Alaska is weak in the breadth and extent of its analytical capabilities, for both service and research. Modern research equipment is both expensive and complex. None of the federal or state research institutions by themselves can afford the human or financial resources to acquire, operate, and maintain what they need in the state. Therefore the only feasible solution, if the state wishes to lessen its reliance upon outside resources and improve internal capacity, is to promote partnership and facility sharing, within compatible disciplines and in locations where clusters of common interest and need exist. Some partnering already occurs, for example through cooperative research and sharing agreements between UA and state or federal research institutes. State acceptance of our recommendation to promote the development of a statewide set of observing and monitoring networks will provide additional momentum toward coordination and sharing, to help ensure consistency of data quality and standards as well as to meet multiple needs at sampling sites. We recommend that the state actively promote dialog among UA, industry, state and federal agencies, and other participants (e.g. the hospitals for health and biomedical research, Alaska Native groups for contaminant analyses and other topics of particular interest, and industry when there is likely to be significant demand for service-type analyses or where industry would like to access research-quality labs for its own interests) to define areas of common interest and need. State and federal cooperation will be required to rationalize planning, budgeting, and financing. This will not occur without a dedicated and consistent effort on the part of the state. The payoff should be not just better facilities and analytical capacity, but a much more coherent and integrated, less wasteful, and more trusted R&D enterprise. - Incentives. One of Alaska’s major deficiencies is the very small amount of industrial R&D in the state. ASTF is currently the only state mechanism with the capacity and charge to invest in industrial R&D development. The state should consider other mechanisms that favor and promote the in-state development of R&D capability. These can include funding of “cooperative research centers,” tax incentives, land use provisions, simplification of permitting, preferential contracting to in-state companies or consortia, access to facilities and equipment via industrial or R&D “parks” connected to the University or other R&D clusters, and direct state support and promotion of joint industry-UA-state or state/federal R&D projects. 22 An example of the latter could include state support via its congressional delegation, and joint funding through an appropriate state agency such as DCED, of the R&D programs and road-mapping conferences now supported by the Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Arctic Energy Office via UA’s Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory. The University of Alaska is the state’s principal R&D resource. To reiterate, nationally 74% of R&D is done by industry; in Alaska it’s only 7%. University research is 57% of research in Alaska but only 14% nationally. Thus if the state wishes to strengthen the health of its R&D institutions, it must start by focusing on the needs of its University, while ensuring that UA’s priorities and abilities are commensurate with state needs. Lacking such direction from the state, however, UA’s research capabilities have largely been driven by the interests and initiative of individual scientists, and by the availability of federal funding. While this has built some great strengths, it has also resulted in a situation where many of the faculty have little interest or experience in the specific needs of the state, particularly in technical disciplines that may be of direct economic benefit. In turn, industry in the state has gone elsewhere for its R&D needs, exacerbating the disconnections. Further, a significant number of the researchers and research institutions in UA have relied excessively upon support from Alaska’s congressional delegation. In some cases congressional earmarks are essential to start an initiative or build capacity. Reliance upon this process, however, can undercut efforts to build competitive capability and quality, bias funding agencies and their reviewers against UA researchers, and make UA “prey” to outside industry and academic institutions who see UA participation in a project principally as a mechanism of obtaining congressional support. Over the last few years, UA has introduced several new programs to enhance its R&D capabilities. There is now a major commitment to building competitive capacity in key disciplines. The Presidential Professorships have made a significant difference in some areas. A critical move in the direction of excellence has been participation in competitively awarded research-capacity-building programs run by NSF, DOD, and NIH, which are often referred to by the generic term EPSCoR, or Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The research focus areas in these programs address state needs in cold weather engineering, and health and biomedical topics. UA’s facility plans, and associated capital requests to the state, reflect this emphasis; in particular, UAF has made a very major commitment to the development of biomedical capabilities, in particular genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, and toxicology, as discussed in our section on human environmental needs. These are strategic multi-year commitments, and UA will need to continue to focus on them for the long run if it is to achieve its objectives. This focus must be consistently reflected in organization and management as well as in allocation of resources. In discussing a strategy for the natural environment, we stressed the importance of preserving and enhancing scientific excellence where it already exists. In some broad and important areas of research, for example fisheries/oceanography and geophysics, UA research institutes such as SFOS and the GI already have sufficiently recognized quality and competitive capability that they are ineligible for participation in the EPSCoR-like programs. It is particularly important therefore for the state and UA not to neglect their needs for support and encouragement while building in other directions. Research excellence should be rewarded, and it is important for management to pay close attention to trends or actions that may endanger existing strengths. For much the same reason, UAF as the single PhD granting institution in the state should remain the principal research campus. Strength in other areas needs to build on and enhance excellence at UAF, not detract from it. Collaboration and partnership, not competition, are essential. UAF’s strategy identifies a number of disciplines where it desires to maintain its reputation for excellence. As with biomedicine and cold weather engineering, where the intent is to build capacity, resource prioritization and management focus on the part of UAF, combined with complementary support from Statewide and the other MAUs, are essential to maintain quality. Given the breadth of state needs and demography, however, it will also be important over the long run to build research capacity at the MAUs in Juneau and Anchorage. Just as in the case of UAF, clarity of direction, priority, and focus on critical disciplines and skills are essential. The MAUs must make and stick with hard choices. Campus-based expertise in a state with Alaska’s resources must be complementary. State-wide programs for education as well as research, with clearly defined roles for each of the MAUs, will be required in some disciplines; in others, expertise can be centralized in a single location. The state via the UA Board of Regents should ensure that such allocation of responsibility and focus appropriately addresses state needs, while maintaining educational and research excellence in selected fields. Although this report is just the first step in the development and validation of a state R&D plan, it has identified a number of areas where we believe the University should focus on improving its R&D capabilities in support of state needs. We emphasize that such focus should not diminish the University’s support of individual scientific curiosity and initiative, or detract from strengthening areas of excellence not on this list, such as Alaska Native languages and culture, or climate research. Rather, much as already started to a degree in the capacity-building programs, these are areas which deserve special attention. - Marine Science and Fisheries. With over 45 thousand miles of coastline and the nation’s most important fisheries, Alaska must have a world-class program in all disciplines of marine science and fisheries. Assessment of fisheries and wildlife resources and their habitats was the number one priority of the organizations surveyed regarding needs for environmental R&D in the state, and the University must play a leading role in that effort. The UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Science (SFOS) bears the principal responsibility for defining the steps needed to enhance UA’s strengths in this area. This is an field where UA is starting from excellence, but excellence that needs to be significantly strengthened and expanded in scope. SFOS has begun a strategic planning process to this end. Some important steps already taken include initiation of the effort to develop the Coastal Alaska Observing System, CAOS, as part of the US IOOS; the MOU with (initially) NPRB and the EVOS Trustee Council to coordinate planning and resources; and national leadership to acquire an Arctic Region Research Vessel to replace the aged Alpha Helix. The CAOS concept -- a monitoring system coupled to models yielding nowcasts and forecasts for a wide range of users -- is particularly important, and will require the development of “centers of excellence” at a number of locations around the state, and collaboration of many federal, state, and private research-capable institutions, as well as support from many coastal and riverine communities. SFOS’s research program historically has focused on basic studies of fish and marine mammals, stock assessment, and the major oceanographic disciplines of biology, physics, and chemistry. While there is some expertise within UA (though not necessarily SFOS) in fisheries economics, marketing and processing, limnology, ocean engineering, and marine geology and geophysics, a comprehensive program that addresses the needs of the state requires that these now disparate elements be better integrated in both educational and research programs. We envision the evolution of a formal state-wide marine science and fisheries program with components at all UA campuses, in many departments, and at many of the CAOS nodes, directed by the Dean of SFOS. Collaboration and partnership will be essential. In turn, only through the development of such an integrated program, focused on the needs of subsistence users, industry, and regulatory agencies as well as on the science itself, can UA play the requisite R&D leadership role with state and federal agencies. - Land Resource Management. This is the terrestrial counterpart to the above recommendation. It addresses a range of expressed state needs, from climate studies to contamination, regional resilience to resource development. If anything, the disciplines and departments involved are even more diverse here than for fisheries, where at least it is clear that SFOS should take the lead, and where CAOS has proven to be an effective mechanism for coordinating the interests of most of the players. Again, UAF has noted expertise in a number of the relevant disciplines, as well as some world class facilities and programs such as the LTER sites. It has initiated some innovative new interdisciplinary programs in both education and research that are focused on resource management, and is seeking to build capacity through the EPSCoR focus areas, both directly and in conjunction with skills that are equally relevant to biomedicine and health. The overall issue of land resource management is too broad to be useful for structuring a single programmatic approach to strengthening UA R&D expertise. However it is an appropriate theme for focusing the attention of many elements within the MAUs. The land component of the Alaska Observing Network that we have recommended be developed -- the terrestrial counterpart to CAOS -- can be an effective mechanism for integrating the various efforts and enhancing collaboration. There is a need for many different process studies, but monitoring systems and models that attempt to integrate the data and knowledge of process to provide guidance to decision makers and the public, can be shared. UA should take the state lead in coordinating the definition of this component of the observing network, perhaps in conjunction with its efforts to prepare a proposal for an NSF National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The intent is to develop a unifying mechanism that can help clarify roles of the various departments and MAUs, and simultaneously enhance opportunities for collaboration with state and federal agencies. - Cold Regions Engineering. Alaska’s needs for R&D in land, water, and air transportation, in energy extraction and utilization, mining, rural infrastructure, and healthy and safe homes and workplaces -- all themes that have been emphasized in this report -- imply that expertise related to the unique problems of our geography and climate should be the strategic focus of UA engineering departments. One of the EPSCoR research focus areas starts to address some of the needs for new faculty and programs. UA’s Transportation Center initiative and the Center for General Aviation Research are new efforts that have significant potential, if effectively developed and managed. Energy is central to the state’s economic future, and DOE’s Arctic Energy Office at UAF has started to define and draw attention to the needed R&D, as well as deficiencies in the University’s ability to respond. While these nascent efforts hold promise, we believe that cold regions engineering and in particular energy technology for remote areas (for both industrial and mining aw well as community/residential purposes) deserves much greater emphasis in both management and resource allocation at UAA and UAF. UA could do considerably more, both on its own and in conjunction with industry, to develop these skills that are so important to both the state’s economy, and the quality of life of Alaskans. - Health and Biomedicine. We have already noted that biomedical disciplines are a main focus of UAF’s capacity building and facilities programs; elements of these disciplines are also being built up at UAA and UAS, commensurate with their fundamental importance in all aspects of modern biology and chemistry, and their importance to the state. Our task force panels that are addressing these topics will not complete their work until later this spring. However their discussions are based on an earlier strategy development process that focused specifically on UA, so the fundamental commitment to these fields has already been made. One significant remaining issue is the balance of capabilities between the campuses, and in particular, solidification of the health focus at UAA. Difficulties in the WWAMI program, important to the training and recruitment of doctors for Alaska, have highlighted the need for prioritization of this area. Significant strides have been made in nursing education, and they should serve as a model for the required further definition, focus, and commitment in other health-related areas. Other aspects of health delivery would seem to be appropriately centered in Anchorage, while the “wet lab” aspects of biomedicine require the disciplinary skills and very expensive laboratory facilities and equipment to which UAF is already committed, and which should not be duplicated. Strengthening behavioral health R&D will likely entail close collaboration between UAA and UAF. - Education. The focus within the education programs at all three MAUs has, appropriately, been preparing teachers for Alaska. UA has introduced new degree programs to improve both quality and throughput. We note, however, that there are some pressing research issues that are either unique to Alaska, or otherwise unlikely to be adequately addressed by programs outside the state. These include several aspects of the problem of teacher retention and associated student achievement, and the failure, despite years of effort and emphasis upon cultural responsiveness, to significantly improve the interest and performance of Alaska Natives in education. The mere fact that we continue to do poorly in these areas implies that we need to find ways to do better. This will require focused research. Two other aspects of education in Alaska require R&D attention. One is the likely impact of new approaches to standards and testing in Alaska’s educational environment. An R&D program that addresses this issue should be started very soon, to ensure that we have the data needed to understand, if not anticipate, the effects of the new rules. A second is distance education. UA must improve its performance in reaching the rural audience, and in meeting the demands of an urban population that needs workplace training as well as formal education. This requires R&D in both technology and pedagogical techniques. Our previous discussion of education raised a number of additional questions about UA’s educational and training performance that are best addressed by and within the university itself. As opposed to the natural sciences where there is a strong research tradition at UA, research as an enterprise has not been strongly fostered within the Education schools, or for that matter many of the other liberal arts, social science, and humanities colleges, schools, and departments at UA. While all three MAUs are working to improve their performance in this regard, we find the need for significantly strengthened research in education to be particularly compelling. Download 338.85 Kb. Share with your friends:
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