The RACE project addresses the impacts of rapid climate and environmental changes in the Arctic on infrastructure and pan-Arctic and regional population dynamics. By using best available datasets from in-situ and satellite observations and reanalyses together with climate model simulations under CMIP6 RACE will develop improved regional assessments of Arctic Social Indicators, which will be further used for the projections of population dynamics factors as well as demographic and life quality trends of Arctic communities. For the first time results of large-scale climate diagnostics and projections will be used and translated into social indicators and further into demographic variables by using socioeconomic and demographic models, thus providing accurate regional projections of the Arctic population dynamics which presently are routinely relaying exclusively on economy forecasts. The RACE work packages include accumulation and pre-processing of the available climatic, environmental, and socio-economic data for the last decades, which allows for the quantitative assessment of climate and environmental changes in the Arctic critical for the industrial activities and human well-being. They will be used for the development of regional population dynamics umbrella scenarios under different climate change scenarios and associated projections for environment and infrastructure. Of a special importance will the analysis of feedbacks between environmental factors, infrastructure and social indicators and case studies which will identify regions/cities at risk of rapid rates of mortality, net migrations, changes of population structure. RACE scientific results and deliverables will consist of databases of climate and environmental changes in the present and future climate, assessments of their impact onto community well being, projections of climate-mediated pan-Arctic and regional population dynamics and resulting recommendations on future sustainable development of the Arctic communities. RACE results will provide input of immediate relevance for the ongoing IPCC 6th Assessment Report, for Arctic Council Assessments and to the national Climate Change and Sustainability Reports and thus will help to define and implement the growing factor of a changing environment in building strategies for the social-economic development in the Arctic and pan-Arctic regions in the 21st century.

The project addresses the demand of educating doctoral students on high quality and international standards to increase knowledge based solutions for sustainable agriculture and future farming systems – a topic of national, cross-regional and international relevance.Large agricultural areas characterize the landscapes and economies of Russia and Kazakhstan and both countries see the innovative development of this sector as a priority. Compared to this, skilled labour and innovation potential is lacking. As a reaction, a number of initiatives target to build up human resources on all levels (farm workers, specialists, managers) and as well to improve higher education institutions (HEIs). Despite the progress in joining and pursuing the Bologna process, brain drain of young talents and deficient and outdated educational offers for PhD studies impede the goals of HEIs to become international competitive. The consortium of 5 EU partners and 4 Russian and 4 Kazakh agricultural universities together with consultative and expert partners from accreditation, research and private business in Russia and Kazakhstan therefore specified the following objectives.(1) to develop and establish four post-graduate modules at 8 HEIs in different regions to qualify doctoral students on inter- and transdisciplinary contents and approaches relevant for agricultural research and innovation;(2) to increase the human capacity, literature base and equipment of partner institutions to provide doctoral education according to international standards and best-practices;(3) to strengthen international and interregional academic exchange and research cooperation among project partners;(4) to establish a network on doctoral research and education in the agricultural field targeted on the exchange of best practices with a wider audience.Overall the institutional capacity increases to tackle education and research demand in the area of sustainable agriculture and future farming systems.

The Cambrian 'explosion' of early animal life was one of the most transformative events in Earth history, but the underlying patterns and players are difficult to resolve. The conventional shelly fossil record represents only a fraction of ancient diversity, while contemporaneous 'Burgess Shale-type' fossils are too rare and unrepresentative to track evolutionary trajectories. We have, however, identified a new and largely overlooked source of palaeontological data that promises to fill in many of the gaps. 'Small Carbonaceous Fossils' (SCFs) are organic-walled fossils that are too small to be identified on bedding surfaces, but too large and delicate to be recovered by conventional micropalaeontological techniques. Although mostly represented by disarticulated sclerites and cuticle fragments, SCFs are fundamentally more common and widely distributed than their articulated counterparts. Most significantly, the SCF record from shallow marine environments is revealing an unprecedented, and surprisingly modern, diversity of early animals, Our recent SCF work has been extraordinarily successful, but limited to 'post-explosion' phases of the Cambrian record. Here we propose to extend the study of SCFs back in time, with an eye to tracking evolutionary patterns through the Cambrian explosion and into the preceding Ediacaran Period. By far the most promising place to carry out such a study is in well-documented Precambrian-Cambrian boundary sections of the Baltic Basin. These shallow water successions are exceptionally well preserved, richly fossiliferous and easy to access - primarily through drillcore archives at the geological surveys of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden, along with a unique research collection at the Tallinn University. Our primary focus in the Baltic Basin will be in documenting the diversity and distribution of SCFs from the late Ediacaran through to the late Cambrian. We are particularly interested in using the SCF record to test macroevolutionary patterns derived from alternative datasets, including 'small shelly fossils' and execeptionally preseved arthropod biotas in the late Cambrian of Sweden. Microstructural analysis of problematic SCFs have the potential to identify unambiguous bilaterian animals in the Ediacaran, with major phylogenetic and macroevolutionary implications. Combined with geochemical analysis of associated palaeoenvironments, and a search for fossil biomarker molecules, these novel paleontological data will shed fundamental new light on the origin of the modern biosphere.

This project will result in methods to detect boreal recruitment failure (RF) due to fire, an explanatory model of RF, and quantification of climate feedbacks from RF that are not currently accounted for in any climate or vegetation model. The associated data collection and research outputs will benefit models of climate-fire-vegetation feedbacks. Presently all models that incorporate fire disturbance assume forest recovery. Research Questions 1. When and where does boreal RF occur? 2. What are the factors that cause boreal RF? 3. What climate feedbacks are likely to result from boreal RF? Forest loss due to the failure of new trees to survive (recruitment failure) post-fire occurs in boreal forests in Eurasia and North America. The existence of ecological thresholds, or "tipping points" that cause abrupt ecological shifts, is well-known in ecosystems theory but where and when ecosystems are approaching such dramatic changes is difficult to predict. One such extreme ecological shift has been observed in boreal forests that fail to recover after multiple fires within a short time interval (< 10 years). These areas are dominated by grass and are similar to steppe vegetation. Transition from forest to steppe is consistent with predicted changes in vegetation composition in response to regional climate change, and is consistent with global observations of forest loss in response to climate. Preliminary analyses of these sites indicate causes related to changing fire regimes effected by climate. Firstly, although vegetation indices have been used to identify forest loss, there is currently no method to detect RF using remotely sensed data. We address here the likelihood that RF produces a unique signature that can be detected remotely. The total area affected by RF in Eurasia and North America is at present unknown. Using RF locations provided by the Sukachev Institute (see letter of support), we have developed preliminary methods to differentiate between successfully recovery from fire and RF using remotely-sensed vegetation indices. The proposed research would refine these methods and develop an automated approach to detect RF. The lengthening satellite data record permits a new focus on the impact of climate change on boreal forests (the largest terrestrial biome) and its potential consequences. Remotely sensed imagery to date have yielded "snapshots" of ecosystems and disturbance events. With more than a decade of daily imagery from the MODIS sensors, we can begin to monitor processes like disturbance-recovery cycles. This new focus is critically important to the study of climate-ecosystem interactions and climatic "tipping points". Secondly, the causes of RF have not been identified. RF has been observed in areas of Siberia where the length of time between fire disturbances was extremely low. Initial field observations of RF sites indicate that high soil temperature and low moisture create a seedbed unsuitable for recruitment of trees following a fire. Additional field data will provide the inputs for an explanatory model of RF that includes characteristics of the fire (such as intensity and fire weather), pre-fire vegetation (e.g., stand age and density), and post-fire environment (e.g., soil temperature and moisture). Thirdly, the effect of RF on carbon, water and energy fluxes that impact climate has not been quantified. The replacement of forests with steppe vegetation results in carbon losses to the atmosphere from combustion and post-fire decomposition. The net climate impact of RF is presently unknown. Albedo is initially low following a fire and then may become higher due to the higher albedo of replacement vegetation. Changes in evapotranspiration rates affect latent and sensible heat fluxes. The area of RF is likely to grow in response to increasing fire frequency and severity, but the dynamics of recovery from wildfire and RF have not been incorporated into any coupled climate-vegetation models.