On behalf of the United States, the University of Alaska is honored to host the 2008 International Conference on Permafrost (ICOP) under the auspices of the International Permafrost Association (IPA). The Ninth International Conference on Permafrost (NICOP) marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of the IPA and the Fourth ICOP (1983), both having taken place at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The year 2008 is also the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), and the 125th anniversary of the first International Polar Year (IPY). Both the International Union of Geological Sciences and the International Geographical Union, IPA parent organizations, will hold their international congresses in August 2008. The International Year of Planet Earth will also be celebrated in 2008. Taken together, summer 2008 represents a special time to celebrate our national and international permafrost heritage. Special efforts will be made to involve young
researchers, educators and student of all ages, and participants from native communities from all countries with an interest in permafrost science and engineering. The U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA), incorporated in Alaska as a not-for-profit organization, is the parent organization for the NICOP. A U.S. National Committee has been established under the USPA to assist the University of Alaska’s Local Organizing Committee (LOC) as a co-sponsor and co-organizer of the conference

The following are some suggested science and engineering themes for contributed sessions:

* contemporary climate change and paleoclimatic reconstruction in permafrost regions
* cold-regions infrastructures and transportation
* natural and technological hazards in mountainous and high-latitude permafrost regions
* remote sensing and geophysics in terrestrial and planetary sciences
* modeling and scaling of permafrost distribution and changes
* long-term monitoring program to assess changes, thermal state of permafrost, active layer
* permafrost and the global carbon balance, including greenhouse gases and gas hydrates
* impacts of permafrost degradation on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
* vegetation and responses to natural and human-induced disturbances
* permafrost controls on surface waters, groundwater and heat flux processes
* subsea permafrost, sea level changes, and dynamics of coastal permafrost
* advances in exobiology and life in extreme terrestrial environments
* frost-affected soils and soil carbon storage
* advances in artificial ground freezing and waste disposal
* periglacial geomorphology, permafrost mapping, and cryostratigraphy
* differentiating between paleoseismic and cryogenic structures
* cryospheric interactions and global connections
* community development, risk assessment, and planning in permafrost regions
* initial results from the IPY: toward a systems understanding of permafrost changes
* history of permafrost research and IPY
* engineered structures: design, evaluation and economics
* human response to permafrost change
* paleoecology, archaeology and indigenous knowledge of permafrost regions
* economics, subsistence and land use change
* ecological restoration of disturbed tundra