Alaska to host Interior’s first climate science center

Interior officials announced on Thursday they would establish the department's first regional climate change science center at the University of Alaska Anchorage within the next eight weeks.

"With rapidly melting Arctic sea ice and permafrost, and threats to the survival of native Alaskan coastal communities, Alaska is ground zero for climate change," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

Seven additional centers will be established during the next two years. All the centers are to provide land managers with necessary expertise to better protect natural and cultural resources as weather patterns evolve.

While Interior will select the hosts of the seven other centers on a competitive basis, the department picked the University of Alaska without competition because officials deemed it the only institution in the region capable of conducting necessary research in conjunction with federal scientists, according to a senior department official who asked not to be named.

The cost of the Alaska center has not been determined; the university is expected to submit a proposal within the next few weeks outlining plans and costs, the official said.

During the next few weeks Interior officials will seek grant proposals from various institutions, not just universities, for four additional centers in the Northwest, Southeast, Southwest and North Central regions. The Northwest and Southeast centers will be established later this year, and the Southwest and North Central centers in 2011.

Three more regional centers in the Northeast, South Central and Pacific Islands are to be established in 2012, for a total of eight.

The establishment of the centers is a key component of the department's first coordinated strategy to respond to the effects of climate change, described by Salazar in Secretarial Order 3289 in September 2009.

The strategy also calls for creating a network of 18 landscape conservation cooperatives involving federal, state, local and tribal officials, as well as academia and the public. The cooperatives will craft practical solutions for managing new migration patterns, threats to flora and fauna, and other climate-related changes on a regional basis.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is organizing the first eight cooperatives, the senior official said, but the effort will involve officials from multiple agencies. Through the cooperatives and the science centers Interior aims to reduce duplicative efforts among federal agencies and promote greater collaboration not just within Interior, but also between Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Agriculture Department, which includes the Forest Service, the official said.

In testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, Salazar said, "Resource managers consider climate change to be the single most challenging issue they face." The department's goal "is to identify areas and species most vulnerable to climate change and begin implementing comprehensive adaptation strategies by the end of 2011."