Funding granted by the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Culture and Society:

Post-anthropocentric water relations in the Bothnian Bay 

Research on Arctic water-society relations is dominated by a particular "hydro-hegemony" of anthropocentricity, state-centricity and political economy. The project develops an alternative post-anthropocentric approach to investigate Arctic water-society relations as complex entanglements of human/non-human relations. The research will focus on both the past and current  water-society relations, multiple meanings of water, ice and bodies of water, diverse cross-border human/non-human interactions, multi-level governance and transformations in the watery environments of the Bothnian Bay.

Project is led by research professor Monica Tennberg, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.
Funding: 500 000 €

Rethinking International Relations in an Era of the Planetocene: Case Arctic Ocean Up to 2050

 Project proposes a new paradigm for world politics: the Planetocene, which emphasizes that all forms of life – including humankind – are dependent on the well-being of nature. Drawing insights from the Arctic Ocean, which is under increasing human activity due to climate change, technological development, and geopolitical rivalry, the project examines how a planetary just transformation toward the Planetocene could plausibly unfold by 2050. Its novel approach combines International Relations, Sustainability Science, and Futures Studies and produces qualitative scenarios at the intersection of art and science. The project will seek to facilitate “out of the box” thinking about how world politics could look if traditional state-centric political imaginaries were replaced with planetary imaginaries and planetary justice was established as the guiding norm of the international community – a necessary development to save the Arctic, and the world, from a looming ecological catastrophe.

Project is led by university researcher Sanna Kopra, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.
Funding: 497 572 €

Funding granted by the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Biosciences, Health and the Environment:

Borealization of the Finnish subarctic

The boreal forest treeline is advancing further north with the ongoing rapid warming, which will completely transform the current Finnish subarctic landscape and the ecosystem services they provide. So far, attempts to reliably predict shifts in the vegetation or their effect on ecosystem functions have largely failed, because the location of the forest line is not regulated by the climate alone. Rather, studies demonstrate alternative trajectories, where open tundra may turn into a mountain birch forest or a coniferous forest, or mountain birch forest may turn into open tundra due to climate-induced shifts in disturbance regimes. ‘BOREARC’ consortium investigates the rate, the direction and the carbon impact of the forest line advance combining methodologies of forest sciences, remote sensing, soil ecology and statistical modeling. The results will advance theoretical concepts of ecosystem states and inform policy-makers on the expected ecosystem change in this important region.

Project is led by university researcher Sari Stark, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. 
Funding: 698 327 € euros, of which the University of Lapland's share is 399 899 €


Funding granted by the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering:

Combining Coupled Modelling and Machine Learning to Constrain Antarctica's Uncertain Future

While the latest technical summary from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change anticipates several tens of centimeters of sea level rise by the end of the 21st century, they also state that "In a low-likelihood, high-impact storyline and a high CO2 emissions scenario, ice-sheet processes characterized by deep uncertainty could drive global mean sea level rise up to about 5 m by 2150". Such a high increase in sea level would be globally catastrophic, but how likely is it? Our consortium brings together Finland's leading experts in glaciology, statistics, high performance computing and machine learning to address this question. We will do this by simulating the complex networks of interactions between the Antarctic Ice Sheet and it's environment. We will combine computer models for these interactions with efficient machine learning techniques to estimate the possible range of Antarctica's global sea level contribution.

Project is led by research professor John Moore, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.
Funding: 523 024 €


More information:
Monica Tennberg, forename.lastname@ulapland.fi, p. 040 019 2005
Sanna Kopra, forename.lastname@ulapland.fi, p. 040 132 4502
Sari Stark, forename.lastname@ulapland.fi, p. 040 484 4254
John Moore, forename.lastname@ulapland.fi, p. 040 019 4850