In addition to holding various regional workshops and townhall meetings (see a full list here), the Arctic Horizons organizers welcome contributions from the Arctic research community at large.  What do you think the research priorities should be for the Arctic social sciences community over the next 10-15 years?

Over the coming months we will be posting discussion questions from the workshops on this blog.  We invite you to share your ideas in the comments on the blog posts.  Your contributions will be included in the final project report alongside the recommendations from each of the workshops and town hall meetings.

Our first set of discussion questions have to do with the changing Arctic.  

What do you see as the most important changes affecting the Arctic now and in the coming decades?  What evidence is this change based on? Are further changes discussed locally?  If so, how might they be investigated? 

What are possible drivers for Arctic change and what are some possible complications in identifying and assessing drivers of change? 

What existing strategies for coping with or addressing change have been developed locally?  Regionally?  What are the challenges in understanding their consequences? Are there particular nodes where drivers and strategies reflect contradictory factors (e.g. socio-political; ecological; developmental; scale; time; conflicts of interest)?

Are there potentially new and innovative strategies being considered in the settings where we work that invite further attention?  Are there ways to assess potential consequences of these strategies?

What will we miss if we ignore the changes/drivers you identify? What will we be able to do or do better if we improve our understanding of those changes/drivers and their societal effects?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below!