Thank you.
Thank you all for being here today.
I'm going to start with Dr. Hik, if only because we go way back to the research that Dr. Hik started on the tundra ecosystems in the southwestern Yukon. He has continued that line until his very new job in the last couple of years.
This study is about research in the Arctic, especially with regard to climate change. The urgency there is because climate change is impacting the Arctic at a much greater speed than it is us in temperate or tropical latitudes.
You mentioned things like ice extent and permafrost. Some of the most important research—and it may not be the sexiest—include those long-term monitoring datasets that tackle those questions. How can we fix something that we don't know about?
I'll ask Dr. Strong about this as well, but can you talk about the importance of long-term data sets of 10, 20, 30 or more years and how priceless they are when it comes to understanding our world? I'm wondering if you could comment on that.