IASC partners the International Permafrost Association (IPA) and the Climate and Cryosphere project (CliC) initiated a process back in 2014 to seek input on the definition of research priorities in the field of permafrost science. It is now time to collect your opinion on the relevance of the questions that were submitted.
You can access the survey on the ranking of permafrost research priorities under the following link. The survey will be accessible until December 20th, 2017: http://www.surveygizmo.eu/s3/90050886/prp
The initial process was very successful and as many as 359 researchers from 37 countries submitted research questions. The respondents were primarily active in the field of geomorphology, ecology, engineering and infrastructure. 79% of them had a PhD and 53.8% of them had more than 10 years of experience in permafrost research.
The core group spent a considerable amount of hours to read the research questions and to come up with a consolidated list to submit for vote. The consolidation consisted in removing duplicate questions, merge questions with very similar foci, correcting the syntax and spelling of the questions and check that the questions answered the criteria put forward in the first phase of the process.
The result is a list of 347 questions organized in 20 categories. Some questions will look very similar to each other, but the core group decided on listing the submitted research questions in a very inclusive manner and not to perform too much merging. This leads to more representativeness of the original questions, but also to a greater number of questions.
In the survey, the responders are invited to review the questions by category and can choose to review only one category or several (i.e. if you are an expert in more than one category, you have the possibility to vote in several of them). The research questions are then displayed randomly to avoid a potential bias linked to questionnaire structure. Each research question is evaluated with a grade going from 0 to 10.
The evaluation period will run until December 20th, 2017. The core group will then examine the answers and come up with a list of consolidated overarching questions reflecting the selection made by the respondents.
Please share this email and the link with any of your colleagues who you think may be interested. Questions can be directed to Ylva Sjöberg, CliC fellow (ylva.sjoberg@natgeo.su.se) or Hugues Lantuit, chair of the PRP Core Group (Hugues.Lantuit@awi.de).
It’s only with the generous help of individuals like you that this global community driven list of permafrost research priorities can be successful.