Producing knowledge through environmental monitoring and long-term research: findings from an interview study with scientists on Svalbard

Information about the seminar from Jasmine Zhang

It is widely accepted that environmental changes are interrelated with socio-cultural, political and economic changes.

Yet, whether or how such understanding influences environmental monitoring and associated long-term research and vice versa has barely been researched. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 28 natural scientists and technicians on Svalbard – a rapidly warming high-arctic hotspot of environmental monitoring and reseach.

We found that:

• Scientists defaulty struggle to maintain environmental monitoring and long-term research scientific knowledge with changing structures of the knowledge production system, i.e. funding regimes and shorter project lifespan, causing uncertainties and tensions.
• Collaborations with other scientists, institutions and disciplines are often ways scientists deal with these uncertainties, whereas so far societal sectors (e.g. citizen science, transdisciplinarity) are less often seen as relevant. 
• Tensions arise when the individual scientists try to answer the ‘why’ questions behind environment monitoring and long-term research, as they negotiate among the normative ideas on ‘science’ and ‘scientists’, as well as their personal observations, feelings and experiences of Svalbard as a place.

Rather than being problematic, the uncertainties and tensions revelead seem to productively force environmental monitoring into directions that include knowledge and understanding from other disciplines and possibly also those from outside the scientific arena.

All are most welcome to attend via Zoom:  

https://slu-se.zoom.us/j/69684834719

Meeting ID: 696 8483 4719

Passcode: 961004