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Sustainable Transitions through Arctic Redevelopment (STAR)
The Arctic's vast expanse has experienced many low profile but high impact industrial development projects over the past century. The Sustainable Transitions through Arctic Redevelopment (STAR) project has been investigating how the derelict infrastructure from old mining sites, oil and gas development, railroads, and airports can be redeveloped with more sustainable economic development pathways in mind for the region.
The Michigan Technological University team’s fieldwork, led by Dr. Roman Sidorstov, has been examining the potential for repurposing decommissioned mines into pumped underground storage facilities in Gällivare, Sweden. The research team employed the concept of sustainable redevelopment as a theoretical framework while investigating pathways to transform an inherently unsustainable activity—mineral extraction—into a more sustainable practice.
The University of Vermont study, led by Dr. Bindu Panikkar, focused on studying the closure plans of the Red Dog Mine, the world's largest Zinc mine, located above the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Arctic Borough of Alaska. Much of the mine’s closure planning has considered the environmental and technical impacts of the closure, but not the socio-economic implications.
The University of Delaware team, led by Dr. Saleem H. Ali and doctoral student Thomas Hale, has been focusing on the redevelopment prospects for new rare earth mineral extraction and tourism around an old cryolite mining site in Southern Greenland using participatory geospatial analysis techniques. The fieldwork in Greenland has also benefited from a partnership that has been forged with HX Expeditions where the team has also been doing geoheritage education on expeditions.
The STAR team hopes to use the incubator results for a larger project that can consider cumulative impact scenarios for multiple use activities in the Arctic from these redevelopments and concomitant ecological restoration efforts.
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