Mid-Term Assessment of Progress on the 2015 Strategic Vision for Antarctic and Southern Ocean Research (2021) / Chapter Skim
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To track its progress toward these strategic priorities, NSF requested that the National Academies conduct a mid-term assessment of the 2015 Strategic Vision recommendations. The committee was tasked to assess progress in addressing research goals outlined in the 2015 report and identify significant advances in scientific understanding or technical capabilities that present important new opportunities in addressing the mission of NSF's Antarctic Sciences program.
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Research progress in understanding the rates of ice mass loss and sea level rise associated with past ice sheet collapse events is proceeding at a slower pace. Despite the important progress to date, the potential magnitude of the threats to humans posed by Antarctic ice sheet collapse demands a more aggressive, comprehensive, and ambitious research approach; the 1 This paragraph (and related text in the body of the report on pages 5, 7, 22, 56, 74, 94, 95, and 97)
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Multiple studies since 2015 have demonstrated that parts of East Antarctica are rapidly losing mass and have a greater potential for contributions to sea level rise than West Antarctica. East Antarctic research initiatives at the scale of the ITGC supported by new collaborations with foreign agencies as well as domestic partners such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could provide critical information to inform the understanding of current and future sea level rise.
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The seagoing capacity and capabilities of U.S. Antarctic science need to be enhanced to provide critical access to the oceanic margins of the Western and Eastern Antarctic ice sheets and to address Priority I questions in a timely way.
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NSF should evaluate opportunities to enhance access to organisms, samples, and data to advance Priority II science and address logistics challenges that limit access. Efforts to improve access to biological samples will attract a broader research community to Antarctic sciences.
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The scientific community has made significant progress in the design of CMB-S4, considered the global future of CMB research. The next-generation CMB experiment, CMB-S4, which is a central component of Priority III, includes telescopes at both the South Pole and in Chile.
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SUSTAINING A BROAD ANTARCTIC RESEARCH PROGRAM In Chapter 5, the committee evaluates the state of OPP's broad, investigatordriven research program. NSF appears to have sustained a broad-based core research program, although logistical constraints have affected the available support for science.
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.3 NSF should conduct a transparent review of logistical support capacity for the Antarctic Sciences program. A review of anticipated resource demands from the three strategic priorities and other research initiatives relative to logistical capacity and expected infrastructure improvements would identify resource constraints and competing demands.
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Ambitious DEI goals will strengthen Antarctic science by bringing together a broad community of researchers with diverse perspectives to address strategic priorities. The committee applauds recent NSF and individual Antarctic science team efforts to address sexual harassment in field-based programs.
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Expanding the scope of efforts under Priority I to include East Antarctica would also help address urgent science questions about the drivers of ice sheet change and sea level rise. Overall, logistical capacity was a major impediment to the pace and scope of progress in all of the strategic priorities and the broad Antarctic Sciences research program.
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