The US Department of Defense has selected Anchorage in southern Alaska as the sole location for the regional center for Arctic security studies.

It is noted that the Pentagon and the US Air Force will continue to evaluate the Anchorage facilities and to determine the center’s final location.

The Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies will conduct result-oriented Arctic security research in order to promote the Defense Department’s Arctic security priorities, and its specialists will also establish ties with other countries on this subject.

In September, the US Department of Defense said Major General Randy “Church” Kee, USAF (Retired), would serve as the Senior Advisor for Arctic Security Affairs at this Center. In 2020, General Kee was appointed Commissioner to the US Arctic Research Commission, and he was also Executive Director of the Arctic Domain Awareness Center in the US Department of Homeland Security.

The ecological safety of the northern territories was discussed by the participants of the IV All-Russian Scientific and Practical conference "Safe North - clean Arctic", which was held at Surgut State University.

Scientists from Moscow, Tomsk, Vologda, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Tyumen, Yakutsk, Petrozavodsk, as well as representatives of scientific schools and research centers of the USA, Finland, Great Britain, France discussed topical issues related to the ecology and safety of the northern territories, the development of "green" technologies in the context of global climate change and ESG transformation of the industrial sector of the economy.

Scientists focused on autonomous power sources, fuel cells based on hydrogen-generating metals and hydrides, on the transformation of organic carbon in the Laptev Sea land-shelf system, on the cultivation of forest crops as a method of recultivation of disturbed lands in the Arctic oil industry zone and other topics. Young scientists, students and postgraduates also presented their reports. So, a student of the Department of Biology and Biotechnology of SurSU Amina Kazieva conducted a study on the cultivation of shrubby or simply Kuril tea by hydroponics. The plant is included in the Red Book of Ugra and is of great scientific interest from the point of view of a promising medicinal and ornamental culture.

Within the framework of the section "Smart plant growing and forest-climatic projects", other Surgut residents also shared the results of their work, telling about the effectiveness of cultivating eastern goat as a sideral crop in the conditions of the north of the Tyumen region, about the content of tannins in the herb of St. John's wort, grown by the hydroponic method.

SurSU students Elena Kiseleva and Rukhshona Dadadzhanova see a way out of the problem of irrational disposal of industrial and household waste and significant damage to the ecology of the region in sorting garbage and building a regional waste recycling plant, as they told at the conference.

The Department of Foreign Languages has traditionally initiated the section "Russia in the Arctic Dialogue", the working language of which is English. "We consider the work of the section as preparing students and young scientists for international cooperation within the framework of the Association of circumpolar Universities UArctic, of which our university is a member, and their further participation in network scientific research on topics related to the pressing problems of the development of the Arctic region," the organizers said. The section presented reports on technical and humanitarian scientific areas related to the problems of the northern territories of Russia and the Arctic.

An important task for the moderators was the selection of young researchers to participate in the UArctic-2022 congress, which will be held in St. Petersburg in 2022. "We hope that caring young people will take advantage of this chance, declare themselves in the world of science and benefit their native northern region, including the Arctic," concluded Marina Stavruk, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages of SurSU.

The outcome of the two-day conference was a resolution that, among other things, confirmed the importance and necessity of creating joint educational programs on carbon monitoring and regulation, "green" technologies and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Russian Government has approved a list of regions of the Far North and equivalent status territories. The list includes parts of the republics of Altai, Buryatia, Karelia, Komi and Tyva, Trans-Baikal, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Perm and Primorye territories, Amur, Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk, Sakhalin, Tomsk, Tyumen regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area. It also includes Yakutia, Magadan and Murmansk regions, Nenets, Chukotka and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous areas as well as the Kamchatka Territory in full.

“The list of regions of the Far North was compiled in 1992–1994, and amended later on numerous occasions. Its new version has a clearer structure and conforms to the current territorial and municipal division of the country,” a statement posted on the government’s official Telegram channel says.

The document states that the residents of all localities covered by the previous versions of the list will keep the benefits, government guarantees and compensations for which they are eligible.

Researchers of the Moscow State University have created a database "Thermoabrasion of the seashores of the Russian Arctic", which contains information on qualitative and quantitative parameters characterizing the shores of six seas: Barents, Pechora, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Bering.

Thermoabrasion is the destruction of frozen shores as a result of thermal (thermal) and wave action. Almost a third of the entire coastline of the Arctic seas of Russia is subject to this process. To date, researchers from various scientific groups have published a lot of data on the destruction of the shores of the Arctic seas in various regions of the Russian Arctic. However, only the geographers of Moscow State University for the first time collected all the available knowledge into a single database "Thermoabrasion of the seashores of the Russian Arctic".

"Forming a database, the geographers of Moscow State University combined literary, archival and information obtained as a result of their own observations, which reflects the magnitude of the retreat or, conversely, accumulation (that is, "build-up") of the coast for various parts of the Russian Arctic over the past century," the report says.

The database allows you to analyze the spatial and temporal variability of the rates of coastal retreat along the Arctic coast of Russia, compare the rates of coastal destruction with various environmental features - lithological composition of rocks, geomorphological level, as well as hydrometeorological parameters - the duration of the ice-free period, annual sums of positive and negative air temperatures, the frequency of storms.

In the future, MSU geographers plan to supplement and expand the database in order to understand in more detail how the coastline of the Arctic seas changes over time.

One of the largest IT parks in Arctic Russia will open in Arkhangelsk next year to train digital economy professionals.

Arkhangelsk Region Governor Alexander Tsibulsky wrote on social media that the park would open in September 2022 at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU). This cutting-edge center with a floor space of over 10,000 square meters will have workshop rooms, labs, themed rooms for design projects, an information security center, a museum and a coworking space.

Alexander Tsibulsky noted that Digital Arctic would have modern equipment for projects in the fields of telemedicine, intelligent data analysis, and the use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing and other industries.

“But the park’s main mission is to train skilled personnel for the digital economy, network with IT leaders, companies and consortiums, and digitally transform the basic processes at NArFU,” the governor said.

The Arkhangelsk-based IT park, one of the largest in Arctic Russia, will be located in the building of the former headquarters of the 10th Air Defense Army on the Northern Dvina Embankment.

The park’s personnel will create and promote new developments in the fields of telemedicine, intelligent data analysis, the use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing and other industries, and advanced personnel training.

The establishment of the Digital Arctic IT Park has been added to NArFU’s development program until 2035.

The International Arctic Station "Snowflake" is a year-round and fully autonomous complex created on the basis of renewable energy sources and hydrogen energy, without diesel fuel.

"Snowflake" will use the energy of hydrogen, wind and the sun.