In Finland, where the CHARTER project office is based, we get started on summer pretty early. Winter is long, so you can hardly blame us! Come early August, when most of the rest of Europe is in full summer mode, many folks here are already gearing back up in work and schools are underway.
Long way of saying that we at the CHARTER project office are taking our summer breaks in stages over the next few weeks, and also making time for summer fieldwork. Planned summer field work in Russia across several work package teams was upended of course due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and this has meant a dramatic reorienting of our fieldwork plans, some of which will be instead be carried out next year, with a focus more towards Fennoscandia.
However, our work is progressing and in some good news we have added four new team members!
Gaëlle Veyssiere is working at UCL and will be contributing to Work Package 1 and 5. She is a sea-ice and snow physicist with expertise in remote sensing currently based at the University of Cambridge.
Bård-Jørgen Bårdsen (of NINA, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) will be contributing to Work Package 6. Bård is an evolutionary ecologist studying how natural conditions in combination with anthropogenic impacts affect living organisms.
Laura Barbero Palacios (currently at the Faculty of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Agricultural University of Iceland) is joining Work Package 2. Laura is an ecologist specialized in wildlife management and conservation, and terrestrial ecosystem ecology and is interested in understanding terrestrial herbivore-ecosystem interactions.
FInally, Mariana García Criado (currently at the University of Edinburgh) will be contributing mostly to Work Package 1 but also linking to other areas. Mariana is interseted in biodiversity conservation, biogeography, climate change, macroecology, protected areas and the science/policy interface.
Welcome all!
Project leader Bruce Forbes and coordinator Sirpa Rasmus have been in Brussels doing the reporting thing in tandem with the EU Polar Cluster along with Markku Heikkilä of the Arctic Centre.
Hello Brussels, good to see you again! Together with Bruce Forbes and Sirpa Rasmus representing CHARTER project in EU Polar Cluster meeting, good talks about how all these #HorizonEU project can cooperate @BruceForbes4 @ssrasmus @CharterArctic @Arctic_Centre @EUPolarCluster pic.twitter.com/nwND2KXTv9
— Markku Heikkila (@heikkilamark) June 21, 2022