international
polar
foundation
subline
After days of fierce windy weather, calm blue skies appeared in Cape Town and the Akademik Fedorov was finally able to set sail for its long 10 day journey to Breid Bay, Antarctica, the unloading site for the Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE).
The Fedorov is an ice breaker belonging to the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute which is capable of travelling at about 15-20 knots per hour and can break ice up to 2m thick.
The vessel is heading to Antarctica to resupply various research stations including Princess Elisabeth. For BELARE it is carrying 15 containers destined for resupplying and maintaining Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station. The shipment includes building materials - wood, beams, doors etc - needed for the planned renovations and construction of a new two story accommodation annex to replace a temporary structure that was built 10 years ago. The new addition will improve the station's living and working space and will add extra stability to the building infrastructure.
Some of the other containers hold food provisions to keep the scientists and crew fed for the season, as well as equipment and tools. They also hold four smaller sledges that were built in Cape Town to carry loads over short distances.
There is also a new snow melter that was built in Cape Town. It's an improved system with better insulation and its own heating system to improve energy efficiency.
The cargo also includes a new fuel drum compacter. A normal container can only fit about 80 drums, and it is costly and inefficient to ship empty drums back to Cape Town. Now with the drum crusher, several thousand metal drums being stored at Princess Elisabeth can be compacted and sent back to Cape Town to be recycled over the coming years.
Alain Hubert and his team are already on the way to Breid Bay to meet the ship. Once the Fedorov arrives at the fast ice edge, they will have prepared a platform to unload the containers onto large sledges. A Prinoth snow tractor can pull 3 sledges with containers. The route back to the Station is about 20 hours of travel (220km uphill) to Princess Elisabeth.
They will need to do two traverses to get all the cargo back to PEA. The building crew has already demolished the old accommodation annex and is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the building material, and the snow melter and work is going ahead at a brisk pace.
Several improvements to the systems management have already been rolled out and the team is full of energy and optimism.
There will be plenty more stories to tell in the coming weeks!
According to participants and members of the organising committee, the 8th Annual Arctic Futures Symposium held on Monday November 20th was a major success any way you measured it. The symposium provided a public platform to a very diverse group of Arctic stakeholoders to voice their conerns, identify challenges, debate solutions, and promote their initatives in the EU's capital. Nearly 200 participants turned up to the Residence Palace in Brussels’ EU Quarter to hear what more than 40 Arctic stakeholders had to say.
With a focus on smart and sustainable investment in the Arctic, the 2017 edition of the symposium saw strong participation from representatives from Arctic indigenous communities, the EU, local and regional governments in the Arctic, researchers and academics, industry representatives, and entrepreneurs.
Presided by Mikael Janson, Director of the North Sweden European Office in Brussels, the symposium opened with welcome remarks on behalf of the International Polar Foundation from former Belgian Ambassador to Vietnam and member of the Belgian Polar Secretariat, Piet Steel.
Following Ambassador Steel's welcome speech, the symposium saw speeches from three keynote speakers: Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries João Aguiar Machado, Advisor to the Inuit Circumpolar Council and former Premier of Greenland Kuupik Kleist, and the Government of Québec’s new Envoy for Climate Change, Northern and Arctic Affairs Jean Lemire. All three speakers offered unique and important perspectives on smart investment and development for a sustainable Arctic - investment and development that must respect the region’s indigenous traditions and avoid causing harm to the region's unique environment.
The remainder of the day included discussions focused on a wide range of issues, such as:
The symposium closed with remarks from Deputy Secretary General for Economic and Global Issues at the European External Action Service Christian Leffler, who reflected on the salient points discussed during the day, and thanked the International Polar Foundation for its initiative in establishing the symposium as an annual event.
Some of the more salient points brought up at the 8th annual Arctc Futures Symposium inlcude:
A partnership between the International Polar Foundation and the Nordic Regional Offices, Embassies and Missions in Brussels, and private organisations involved in Arctic issues, the Arctic Futures Symposium is held every autumn in Brussels order to Arctic voices to be heard in the capital of the EU.
The International Polar Foundation would like to thank all of the speakers and moderators who took the time out of their busy schedules to offer their knowledge and expertise to the event, as well as all partner organisations, including:
We are also grateful to all participants who took part in the event and engaged all the speakers with their thoughtful questions.
We hope to see everyone agian next year!
The 2017-2018 scientific season at Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station has begun. This is the 14th Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition since the project to build the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica began in 2004.
Getting the Princess Ready
Alain Hubert and his crew have been preparing the station for the first group of scientists who have just arrived in Antarctica, glaciologists and specialists in atmospheric sciences, some heading for the Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf. The Princess had been sleeping over winter, but everything was ticking-over and on-line, purring along on the energy harvested from the wind and the sun.
Mission one is snow clearance. The barricades erected by the wind around the Princess are removed. After a very long dark cold winter in Antarctica, the snow has accumulated and the entrance has to be cut free to allow the garage to be opened and snow tractors to come out and start the spring cleaning. The crew will clear the hard packed ice and snow using Prinoth and Komatsu vehicles stored at the station during the winter months.
Now the princess is ready for human occupation and is in full operational summer mode.
A Scientists Paradise
The expedition this year is truly international and nearly a dozen countries are represented, some for the very first time. The excitement and energy is palpable. Even seasoned researchers are apparently so excited that they cannot sleep. Antarctica beckons.
Princess Elisabeth is located in a pristine part of Eastern Antarctica. The Station is surrounded by a wide variety of research environments, from mountain ranges jutting out of the ice sheet, to wide dry valleys, huge ice fields and icy cold freshwater lakes that are almost always frozen. The research potential for this region is immense and new discoveries lie in wait for curious minds.
Princess Elisabeth offers scientists a wide range of technical and logistical services. The support they receive from the station crew is provided by numerous specialists on site to help with tasks ranging from field deployment, to communication and equipment electronics failures, or to help build impromptu set-ups or RE power supplies.
There are also some equipped laboratories at Princess Elisabeth for biologists. This range of support means that scientists can focus all their time and energy on research, rather than on the extreme challenge of survival, which they would face if they were working alone in Antarctica, one of the harshest and most remote environments on Earth.
Scientific Season
Over the 2017-2018 summer season, 24 scientists will be heading to Princess Elisabeth at different times to carry out research in and around the station. When they arrive in Cape Town, they must patiently await perfect weather conditions before making the long 6 hour journey over the Southern Ocean by Ilyushin 76 to land at the Russian air base Novolazarevskaya. They will then take a smaller plane (DC3 or Twin Otter) to reach Princess Elisabeth, nearly 200 km inland. Even before they arrive, the science has already begun, as some instruments are active throughout the winter. Others are reawakened and others are repaired.
The upcoming season is a full one, with 15 Belgian and international scientific projects planned across a range of disciplines. Dr. Henri Roberts from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences will carry out the first ever bird population assessment in the region, while Canadian scientist, Dr. Lori Ziolkowski is returning to the station to continue her research on microbial activity in Eastern Antarctica. This year there will be six Canadians at the Station, including two team members, two scientists and two technical consultants. We will also be welcoming scientists from Taiwan and Turkey for the first time.
This year will also see the deployment of the 8th AWS (automatic weather station built by the University of Wisconsin) and it is our intention to provide all the data from the station on-line, in the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty.
Keep on Top of the Science
Much more is planned, so please stay tuned over the next four months. We will keep you up to date on the scientists, their work and all the other excitement that will be surely happening at Princess Elisabeth Antarctica!
Author: Lisa Benedetti
For the the 8th year in a row, the International Polar Foundation, along with its many partners, are proud to host the next annual Arctic Futures Symposium in Brussels on Monday November 20th, at the Residence Palace in Brussels' EU Quarter.
Organised in conjunction with the Nordic regional offices, the missions and representations of several Arctic states in Brussels, and with the financial support of the Brussels Capital Region, the 2017 symposium will welcome Arctic stakeholders to the seat of the European Institutions to hold a public dialogue about key issues facing the Arctic and Arctic stakeholders for the benefit of the EU and the general public.
The theme of this year’s symposium will be “Smart and Sustainable Investment for the Arctic’s Future”. Following a series of opening keynote speeches from distinguished speakers from the EU and Arctic countries, the symposium will host a roundtable discussion with Senior Arctic Officials and representatives from the foreign ministries of Arctic nations. Following this, the symposium will look at:
The full programme and a list of confirmed speakers for this year’s symposium can be found on the Arctic Futures Symposium website, along with a full list of partner organisations.
The event is open and free of charge. Anyone who is interested in Arctic issues is welcome to attend. However, for security and logistical reasons, registration is mandatory. Those interested in attending can register directly via the event website.
For any inquiries related to the Arctic Futures Symposium, please contact the event organisers directly at events@polarfoundation.org or +32 (0)2 520 34 40.
We look forward to seeing many of you at the symposium!
The long and difficult chapter concerning the dispute over the management and operation of Princess Elisabeth Station research station has come to a close, or one might say, has turned a page. Zuhal Demir, Belgian Federal Secretary of State for Science Policy and Alain Hubert, Founder and President of the International Polar Foundation (IPF), shook hands on a new agreement to reset PEA on a positive course for collaborative international scientific research on the icy continent.
Background
The International Polar Foundation and its private partners conceived of and built the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station in the Dronning Maud Land region of East Antarctica. Princess Elisabeth is the first polar research station designed to run entirely on renewable energy sources (wind and solar power). Construction was completed in February 2009, and in March 2010 the International Polar Foundation donated the station to the Belgian State under specific conditions. Among these was that a public-private partnership (Belgian Polar Secretariat) be set up to manage the station, and that in light of the technical specificities of the PEA Station the International Polar Foundation be allowed to continue to manage the station operations and logistical support for research activities. However, since the donation, there had been a simmering conflict between the two parties over interpretation of the agreement and this has had a detrimental impact on the Foundation as well as scientific activities.
A New Partnership
When Minister Zuhal Demir came to power earlier this year, she quickly saw the need for reconciliation and a new partnership between the Belgian State and International Polar Foundation so that the important scientific work carried out at the PE station could re-launch with added vigour. This young Secretary of State was able to break the dead-lock where many others had failed to the detriment to the future of Princess Elisabeth Antarctica and the international reputation of Belgium. A new and constructive solution was found that would resolve the conflict.
“We have pressed the "reset" button so we can start on a blank page. Good agreements and good discussions make good friends. I do not look to the past, but to the future, and the future is scientific research.” Zuhal Demir, Belgian Secretary of State for Science Policy
2017-2018 Scientific Expedition
Thanks to the openness of Secretary Demir, and the tenacity of Alain Hubert and the International Polar Foundation, this re-established partnership once again places Belgium at the forefront of science in Antarctica. The upcoming season will be an exciting one, with fifteen scientific research projects planned and twenty-five scientists from a dozen countries.
So stay tuned for more news about the scientists and their research during the 2017-2018 expedition to Princess Elisabeth Antarctica!
KREATIVA (Morlanwelz) wins the prestigious 2017 Belgian Energy and Environment Award for its project "Growing together through the social dimension of development"
Each year, Belgian Energy and Environment Awards are presented to Belgian citizens who have undertaken outstanding initiatives on environmental protection and promoting sustainable energy use. The International Polar Foundation has been a partner of the awards since its first edition in 2006. Since then nearly 2200 projects developed by citizens, corporations, institutions, associations, schools and administrations that have provided exceptional contributions to the construction of a sustainable future at local, regional and national levels have taken part.
This years awards ceremony took place on 8th June at the BEL (Tour & Taxis Site). High profile guests included Mrs. Céline Fremault, Minister of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, in charge of Housing, Quality of Life, Environment and Energy, and Mrs. Claire Vandevivere, Echevine, representing the Minister for Environment, Town and Country Planning, Mobility and Transport and Animal welfare. Many individuals from political, scientific and private sectors also attended.
The 2017 International Polar Foundation special prize was awarded to KREATIVA (Morlanwelz) for its project "Growing together through the social dimension of development".
Find out more about the projects presented at this years Belgian Energy and Environment awards in French or Dutch.
Congratulations from the International Polar Foundation to all 2017 laureates!
Note: Applications for the 2018 Belgian Energy Prize and the Environment will be open from October 2017. The organisers and partners encourage everyone to participate by submitting a project. They are already looking forward to reading about your innovative and creative projects towards sustainable development. More information: info@eeaward.be
Dr. Lori Ziolkowski takes a look back on her first field season at the Princess Elizabeth Antarctic Research Station and the small life forms that manage to survive around it
Dr. Lori Ziolkowski and Dr. Stefanie Lutz, travelled to the Princess Elizabeth Antarctic Research Station (PEA) in early 2017 for their first field season. The weeks before departure were busy with medical evaluations, preparing sampling gear, and everything else needed to survive and lead a successful scientific trip in one of the worlds most extreme environments.
The overarching goal of Lori’s REMACA project, supported by the Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship and the International Polar Foundation, is to discover what types of life forms live around PEA and how active this life is. Previous studies have found ample evidence of microbial life on rocks, in the rocks, in ice-covered lakes and in the soil. But it remained unclear how active these microbes are. The climate of East Antarctica is harsh by temperature standards and these conditions are known to limit microbial activity elsewhere, like in the high Arctic.
But to the great surprise of Lori and Steffi, life is almost everywhere around PEA. By the end of their field trip, they had more samples than originally planned. Samples were collected from soils, rocks, ice, and even lakes. Most lakes around PEA are covered with a meter of ice because air temperatures do not go above freezing, so it was surprising to find one lake partially ice-free. In this open water lake, they found macroalgae, similar to seaweed, and green cyanobacteria mats.
The most hospitable place for a microbe trying to survive in Antarctica’s harsh environment is actually inside the rock. Endoliths are a type of microbe that lives within rocks. When a rock is broken into pieces, one can typically see a line of green pigment and that green pigment is where microbes have been harnessing the suns energy through photosynthesis. Scientists often study endoliths because they may give us clues as to where life on other planets like Mars may exist. In the region surrounding PEA, microbes were found in most rocks.
Much of the field effort was also focused on studying cryoconites. Cryoconite holes are circular holes in glacier ice. Microbes also find these holes a hospitable place to live because they often contain melted water. In the Arctic, Lori and Steffi have studied and found cryoconites that are open to the atmosphere and have no ice cover. Typically, in Antarctica the cryoconite holes are ice covered and those around PEA were usually covered with 8-10 cm of ice. Multiple cryoconite samples from many locations around PEA were collected to determine local and regional variability in the composition of the material within these cryoconite holes.
Now that Lori and Steffi have returned to their labs, first sampling adventure over, the real work of analyzing samples begins. Over the next six months, they will process samples to find out which organisms are living in these samples and how active these microbes are. This will provide valuable information about what type of sampling should be conducted in 2018, their next field campaign. Lori and Steffi are excited to start working in the lab, to see what they find so they can begin making plans for the next trip!
Canadian research scientist Dr. Lori Ziolkowski has been awarded the Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship for 2016-18 for her research project "REMACA"
The Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship Committee unanimously selected Canadian Dr. Ziolkowski, based at the University of South Carolina (USA), to receive the prestigious €150,000 research grant. Her project “REMACA” aims to use the natural abundance of radiocarbon to study the rates of carbon accumulation and microbial activity. Through international collaboration, age estimates will be coupled with microbial community analyses to better characterize what microbes are active.
“Winning the Baillet Latour Fellowship award will allow me to collect samples and study rates of microbial activity in East Antarctica, one of the worlds remotest and most extreme environments. This research will improve our understanding of the limits of life on Earth” says Dr. Lori Ziolkowski.
This proposal received top scores from a Scientific Jury made up of three international experts in microbiology. The experts stated that the proposal described an excellent, well planned, novel and feasible research project led by a very well-qualified and knowledgeable applicant. They also agreed that the use of 14C to study carbon dynamics introduces an innovative aspect to research done in this field. Members of the Fellowship Committee also agreed that her proposal stood out from other candidates and follows up on previous Belgian microbiological research in the different habitats surrounding the Princess Elisabeth Station.
In January 2017, Dr. Ziolkowski will travel to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica polar research station to begin her fieldwork. She will spend three weeks working at various sites within the vicinity of the station. More information about the REMACA project will be available in the coming months on the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station website www.antarcticstation.org.
The 2016 annual UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference “COP22” started only a few days after the Paris Agreement, the international agreement which aims to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees, entered into force. At the time of writing in mid-November, 112 out of 197 countries, including the USA, China, India and the European Union, have ratified this agreement.
Time for action
So, COP22 promised to be a time for action: focusing on what had and could be done and planning the best way forward. Government negotiators from around the world arrived in Marrakesh, Morocco, for two weeks of talks, whilst representatives from non-government organizations and interested parties were welcomed to the conference to act as “observers”, providing advice, networking and sharing knowledge. The International Polar Foundation was fortunate to be one of these organizations.
Meeting the world
Our display booth, featuring the zero emission Princess Elisabeth Station, was located between the equally fascinating Algerian “Deserts du Monde” and Plymouth Marine Laboratory “Ocean Under Stress” in the blue zone exhibits and side events area. Students, politicians, business people, scientists, conservationists and campaigners from around the world stopped by on their way to and from meetings and side events. We were honoured with a brief visit from the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Hoesung Lee and his South Korean colleagues.
We also ventured out to explore the conference site: there were pavilions for many countries with displays, events and discussions in each area. The Indian pavilion had unique “aqua curtains” – shapes drawn in water behind an LED screen. The huge screens with vibrant scenes and wooden trees in the Africa pavilion were impressive and the USA Center had a “hyperwall” used by NASA to show key satellite information about our climate and environment – we saw an excellent talk on atmospheric composition and air quality. Over in the green “innovation” and “civil society” zones, there were more people to meet, talks, discussions, artisan products, singing and artwork. A feast for the mind and the senses!
What was everyone talking about?
There was a lot of talking – formal meetings, informal discussions, press conferences and presentations. We went along to presentations on climate change education, an update on the IPCC’s programme, the launch of the Emissions Gap Report and a session on innovation, where one of the products described was a carbon fibre material which removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during its production. An award ceremony chaired by Solar Impulse co-pilot Bertrand Piccard was held by the UN Momentum for Change to celebrate “lighthouse activities”, activities that are paving the way toward a resilient, low-carbon future. You can hear about some of the projects here and watch the video competition winner here.
Will the Paris Agreement be Trumped?
Following the US election result, many people were concerned that the incoming president could derail the Paris Agreement. However, Secretary John Kerry gave an impassioned speech, which we watched in the US Pavilion, stating that the Paris Agreement is bigger than any one country or head of state. And the more we saw at the conference, the more we realised that determined action is being taken at all levels – by cities, regions, businesses, coalitions and alliances, building momentum.
Positive outlook
At the end of the conference a 2050 Pathways Platform was launched to help countries, cities, companies and organisations to develop long-term, deep decarbonisation strategies through sharing resources, knowledge and experiences and collective problem solving. The Marrakech Action Proclamation issued on the same day, referred to “extraordinary momentum on climate change worldwide, and in many business multilateral fora. This momentum is irreversible - it is being driven not only by governments, but by science, and global action of all types at all levels."
Fiji will preside over the next UN climate change conference COP23, which will take place in Bonn, Germany in 2017. We hope to see a lot more progress before then!
Young polar scientists were invited to submit their application for the 2016 - 2018 Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship by 15 September 2016.
The call for proposals for the 2016 – 2018 Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship is now closed. A joint initiative of the Baillet Latour Fund and the International Polar Foundation, the €150,000 research grant aims to promote scientific excellence in Antarctica and underscores the crucial role polar science plays in furthering our understanding of the Earth and how it functions.
The Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship provides young scientists with the opportunity to conduct research in East Antarctica operating out of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station.
The call for proposals was open to current doctoral researchers and researchers within 10 years of obtaining their PhD from all countries. The Fellowship provides funding for field campaigns during two austral summers (2016–17 and 2017–18). The successful applicant will continue to work at their current research organisation.
Young researchers interested in conducting research in the atmospheric sciences, glaciology, geosciences and microbiology (excluding marine microbiology) at, or near, the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica were encouraged to apply.
The deadline for 2016 – 2018 Fellowship applications was 15 September 2016.
Do you think you could be the next Fellowship laureate in 2018 - 2020? Wish to know more about past laureates?
Learn more about the Fellowship and how to apply on the section of our website dedicated to the Fellowship.
The first 14 members of the BELgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE) are off to a strong start opening and preparing the station for the arrival of scientists in the coming days.
The MAS exhibition 'To the Antarctic' welcomed more than 45,00 visitors over the 4.5 months that it was open to the public.
The International Polar Foundation was again present and active at the annual Arctic Circle Assembly and accompanying Arctic Circle Business Forum in Reykjavik, Iceland from October 17th-19th.
The latest edition of the annual Arctic Futures Symposium organised by the International Polar Foundation and its many Arctic stakeholder partners will take place in early December. Register to secure your spot!
IPF is sad to learn of the passing of glaciologist Professor Roland Souchez, who made important contributions to the fields of glaciology and climate science during his decades-long career.
To celebrate the opening of the exhibit “To the Antarctic: Belgica’s Polar Pioneers”, Antwerp resident and LEGO enthusiast Daniel Vermeir built an amazing scale model of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the world’s first and to date only zero-emission polar research station.
To celebrate the opening of the exhibit “To the Antarctic: Belgica’s Polar Pioneers”, Antwerp resident and LEGO enthusiast Daniel Vermeir built an amazing scale model of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the world’s first and to date only zero-emission polar research station.
The International Polar Foundation has been part of creating a fascinating new exhibition on Belgium's contributions to Antarctic exploration and research, opening at the MAS Museum in Antwerp starting from Friday, June 21st.
After much anticipation, on Thursday, June 20th, the exhibition “To the Antarctic: Belgica’s Polar Pioneers” at Antwerp’s MAS Museum officially opened its doors.
On Tuesday, June 11th, IPF Founder and President Alain Hubert was invited to participate in the “Debate with Ambassadors” panel at European Sustainable Energy Week 2024 (EUSEW24).
At a ceremony held the afternoon of Monday, June 10th at The Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium, Alain Hubert, Founder and President of the International Polar Foundation, received the prestigious Belgica Prize alongside French glaciologist Professor Jérôme Chappellaz.
At a ceremony held the afternoon of Monday, June 10th at The Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium, Alain Hubert, Founder and President of the International Polar Foundation, received the prestigious Belgica Prize alongside French glaciologist Professor Jérôme Chappellaz.
