Interagency Land Use Agreement Signed for North Slope of Alaska

 
Published: 31 March 2008

As scientific neighbors on Alaska's North Slope, the ARM site at Barrow operates between NOAA (right) and USGS (left) research facilities.  Less than 1 km to the northwest, the shore of Elson Lagoon leads to the Arctic Ocean.

After more than a year of discussions and negotiations, ARM has renewed its land use agreement with interagency partners to continue operations at its North Slope of Alaska site at Barrow. Signed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the new agreement extends for 10 more years, with a provision for operations up to 40 years, contingent on an extension of the NOAA/USGS land use withdrawal agreement. The commitment of all parties to this agreement strengthens each organization’s position in the Arctic research community.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management controls much of the real estate on Alaska’s North Slope, along with Alaskan native corporations. When the original ARM research site in Barrow was established in 1997, the agencies signed a “right of way” agreement for operation of the Great White instrument shelter for 10 years. As originally intended, this time period would be sufficient to establish the minimum climate record for use by the atmospheric research community. With the success of the ARM infrastructure and its designation as a national user facility in 2003, it became clear that ARM would continue operations in the area into the foreseeable future, and the agreement would need to be renegotiated and extended.

A series of meetings between ARM and BLM, NOAA, and USGS began in earnest in 2007, with each party negotiating in good faith to ensure the success of each organization’s scientific efforts. Based on these discussions, the agreement was modified to address all concerns, and is now between DOE, BLM, NOAA, and USGS. As ARM’s site operations team at the North Slope, Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory are also signers to the agreement.