Date

Dear Arctic Colleague,

The Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF-OPP)
sponsored a community workshop in December 1998 to consider future support
for scientific research in the area of Barrow, Alaska. At this workshop,
more than 70 members of the arctic research community, policymakers, and
leaders of Barrow met to develop recommendations regarding:

  • Broad research questions that could be or are being addressed in the
    general area of Barrow;
  • Research that is important but cannot currently be undertaken because of
    the lack of research support or logistics infrastructure; and
  • Supportive infrastructure and additional facilities that must be
    developed to sustain such research.

I am writing on behalf of Henry Huntington, workshop chair, and the workshop
participants, to let you know that a draft of the workshop report and
recommendations is now available for broad community review. Comments from
the arctic research community and residents of Arctic communities are vital
to the development of a thorough and balanced report. Your review of the
document will be greatly appreciated.

Included below are
(1) information on how to get the draft,
(2) comments about the draft with some specific questions for reviewers,
(3) a request for illustrations,
(4) editing instructions, and
(5) the timeline for publication, including the deadline for submission of
your review comments.

Please send review comments on the draft to ARCUS by Monday, 2 August 1999
by email, fax or postal mail. Email comments sent to arcus [at] arcus.org are the
easiest for us to deal with but all comments are appreciated. The fax number
is 907/474-1604.

  1. HOW TO GET THE DRAFT
    The draft report is available on the ARCUS web site
    http://www.arcus.org/barrow/fr_barrow.html as a downloadable PDF file. Please contact us as soon as possible if you are experiencing problems with
    downloading. We will express mail a hard copy if necessary.

  2. COMMENTS ON THE DRAFT
    This draft of the report has been prepared based on reviews by workshop
    participants of an initial draft by workshop participants. It is now
    available for broad community review. We welcome comments on any aspect of
    the draft, and particularly on any inaccuracies in the text or figures and
    on the overall flow of ideas.

APPENDICES: Corrections and additions to the Bibliography (Appendix C) would
be appreciated. We are especially interested in adding appropriate social
sciences and current biology references.

When you send comments, please supply us with your current contact
information so that we can list you as a reviewer in Appendix D.

  1. FIGURES, PHOTOS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS
    If you have photographs or other illustrative material that might improve
    the report, please let us know. If you submit graphical material to us,
    please provide a caption and the relevant information for credits.

  2. EDITING INSTRUCTIONS
    Please send review comments on the draft to ARCUS by
    Monday, 2 August 1999

When you submit review comments on this draft, please DO NOT send a
rewritten version of the draft, either on hard copy or by email, with
changes made directly in the text. All suggested revisions should be sent as
separate pieces and clearly referenced to the Draft by Chapter number,
subsection name, paragraph number, sentence number within the paragraph, or
by sentence fragment. Please do not use page numbers for reference, because
they may change depending upon how you received your draft. Faxed hard copy
can have changes written directly on the document as long as the
recommendations are clearly legible and comprehensible.

If you send changes made directly in the text document, we may not be able
to use your recommendations effectively because it is too difficult to read
through the entire document to find subtle changes in wording or
organization. Illegible editorial recommendations written on a faxed or
mailed copy are also not very useful to us.

  1. TIMELINE
  • Draft available for broad community review - 7/13/99
  • Final comments by 8/2/99
  • Published - 8/31/99

We look forward to receiving your comments on this draft of the Barrow
Research Support Workshop report by Monday, 2 August 1999.

Thank you.

Wendy K. Warnick
Executive Director
Arctic Research Consortium of the United States
600 University Ave, Suite 1
Fairbanks, AK 99709