SNAP program offers climate-change resources

Submitted by Doreen Fitzgerald
Phone: (907) 474-5042
04/26/07

Fairbanks, Alaska--To address rapid environmental change, Alaska’s managers and policymakers need timely access to research that shows how current changes may shape future conditions. In response, the Scenarios Network for Alaska Planning has been created to develop scenarios that are based on the most current information available.

The University of Alaska program, known as SNAP, will link the university with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and industry to help them develop well-informed plans for communities, transportation, coastlines, infrastructure, and forests and other natural resources.

"SNAP was a grassroots vision developed by university faculty and championed by Craig Dorman, UA vice president for academic affairs and research, as a means of making our climate change research more important regionally and more relevant globally as well,"? said SNAP director Scott Rupp.

Rupp is an associate professor of forest sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, which will host the SNAP program.

UA President Mark Hamilton is supporting the program launch with an investment of $1.5 million over the next two years.

"SNAP represents a major investment by President Hamilton and the university in activities related to the International Polar Year and in our efforts for years to come,"? said Rupp.

SNAP products will include maps and projections of future conditions; objective interpretations of scenarios; detailed explanations of the assumptions, models and methods that describe controls over projected future conditions; and information on the uncertainties inherent in the projections. The products and data used to produce them will be openly available to all potential users.

Three existing projects having clearly defined stakeholders will be the first to demonstrate the program’s capabilities:

• Estimating the value of public infrastructure at risk due to climate change
• Changing human-fire interactions in Alaska’s boreal forest
• Coastal and river erosion and flooding

Any stakeholder can access SNAP network services and expertise by becoming a SNAP collaborator. Establish-ing a formal collaboration with SNAP requires engagement with SNAP to define the problem, the information most essential for solving it and the best way to provide the information; collaboration does not require a commitment of funds.

Rupp will direct SNAP with oversight and advice from a five-member steering committee and a nine-member science advisory committee. The program will collaborate with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded program launched by UAF and UAA in 2006 to engage Alaskans in planning for the impacts of climate change. Other partners include: the Institute of Social and Economic Research at UAA and, at UAF, the International Arctic Research Center, Arctic Region Supercomputer Center, Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research, Geographic Information Network of Alaska, Geophysical Institute, Institute of Arctic Biology, Institute of Northern Engineering and the bioinformatics program.

CONTACT: Doreen Fitzgerald, information officer, UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, at (907) 474-5042 or via e-mail at fndlf2@uaf.edu. Scott Rupp, associate professor and SNAP director, UAF School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at (907) 474-7535 or via e-mail at scott.rupp@uaf.edu.