Arctic Rivers Project Directed at MBL Receives Frontiers “National Champion” Designation

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- The Frontiers Planet Prize, the world’s largest science competition to enhance planetary health by fast-tracking innovative research, today announced National Champions from 19 different countries who now advance to the International competition, which will award three winners $1M each to scale up their research.

Suzanne Tank and co-authors from the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO), a multinational project founded at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), were recognized for their publication, “Recent trends in the chemistry of major northern rivers signal widespread Arctic change,” published in Nature Geosciences.

Tank, an associate professor at University of Alberta, was selected as the 2025 National Champion for Canada. She was a postdoctoral scientist at the MBL when she first got involved with ArcticGRO and is currently a principal investigator on the project.

ArcticGRO was conceived in 2002 by Bruce Peterson, R. Max Holmes, and James McClelland while the three were working together at the MBL’s Ecosystems Center. Peterson was the founding director of the project, followed by Holmes, and McClelland is the current director. The project, initially called PARTNERS, has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation since its inception and is a component of NSF's Arctic Observing Network.

ArcticGRO’s work involves a large cast of collaborators from the United States, Canada, and Russia, and its ongoing success relies on the strong international partnerships that have been forged and sustained over the past 20 plus years.

“This recognition from Frontiers highlights the value of sustained international collaborations for solving global challenges,” McClelland said. “I am proud of Suzanne and the ArcticGRO team for their vision and long-term commitment to the project.”  

Since 2003, ArcticGRO has provided essential data about six large Arctic rivers that originate in Canada, Russia, and the United States (Alaska) and discharge into the Arctic Ocean, transporting huge quantities of water and water-borne materials from the continents to the ocean. Changes in river water flow and chemistry reflect changes occurring on land and lead to changes in the chemistry, biology, and circulation of the receiving ocean waters.

“When measured at their outflow, the chemistry of these large rivers provides a ‘fingerprint’ that integrates a multitude of processes occurring over vast spatial scales,” Tank writes in the project description for Frontiers. “Our multinational team has worked together to measure the chemistry of these six large rivers for over two decades. This long-standing, cross-jurisdictional collaboration has built a time series that has provided critical insight into the functioning of the land-ocean Arctic system, while also amassing a sample archive that enables retrospective analyses as important new questions emerge.”

“MBL Ecosystems Center scientists have been conducting exemplary research in the U.S. Arctic for half a century,” said MBL Director Nipam Patel. “It is gratifying to see the ArcticGRO, one of their initiatives, recognized by the Frontiers Foundation for its sustained contributions to understanding global change in a critical region of the planet.”

The National Champions were selected by 100 independent experts – the Jury of 100 – all renowned sustainability and planetary health leaders. A list of the 2025 National Champions is here.

A direct response to the urgent need for faster global scientific consensus, the Frontiers Planet Prize has already engaged with more than 10,000 researchers, 23 academies of science, and 600 leading universities and research institutions from 62 countries, to bring forward transformational and globally scalable research from around the world, with a focus on enabling healthy lives on a healthy planet.

“Faced with immense threats to people and planet, we need bold, transformative solutions, rooted in evidence and validated by science. Innovative yet scalable solutions are the only way for us to ensure healthy lives on a healthy planet,” said Jean-Claude Burgelman, director of the Frontiers Planet Prize.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery – exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.