Once again the time has come for 20,000 people from around the world to flock to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco to present the latest research examining our ever dynamic planet.  Included among these world-class scientists is a tight cohort of undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate researchers who share a common experience: POLARIS. Each summer since 2008 the POLARIS project has brought together an amazing group of ambitious, ardent, and affable young students and early-career faculty to spend a month in the far reaches of northeastern Siberia studying the biogeochemistry of a carbon-rich landscape being reshaped by global climate change. Many of these POLARIS alumni—student and faculty alike—are now here in San Francisco sharing their most recent scientific findings. It is really quite impressing how POLARIS alumni are being increasingly recognized by the broader scientific community as powerful voices in the arena of Arctic and Siberian system science.

I had the pleasure of speaking in a session about social and environmental change in northern Eurasia that was organized in part by Dr. Alexander Kholodov from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My talk, which examining the impacts of climate change on plant productivity in northeastern Siberia using satellite and tree-ring measurements, was based on research that I started as a POLARIS student and then continued while working at the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC). Both Drs. Mike Loranty (Colgate Univ.) and Sue Natalia (WHRC) also gave presentations in the session about work that we did last summer while in Chersky. All told, POLARIS dominated the session, with over half of the talks given by alumni. It was a strong showing of a small slice of what POLARIS alumni are presenting this year, let alone what they have accomplished in recent years. Keep rocking the science POLARIS!