ITRC associated research project granted with two million ISK

The Organisation “Friends of Vatnajökull“ has decided to grant the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre for the research project “Glacier Tourism and Climate Change in Iceland“ with two million ISK. The research project began in autumn 2013 and the researcher working on the project is Johannes T. Welling.

The central goal of the project is to develop an adaptation strategy for glacier based tourism in Iceland to cope with the potential impacts of climate change and climate variability, based on a set of future scenarios.

Despite the growing popularity of glacier based tourism activities and the increasing development of such activities by tourism companies on the one hand, and the growing knowledge of the rapid global reduction of glacier volumes on the other, only a few studies have to date been carried out that have researched the climate induced environmental impacts on glacier based tourism. None of these studies furthermore relates to tourism in Iceland.

The project will use Vatnajökull and Vatnajökull National Park as case study area. The research project is estimated to be finished in 2016.

This research will have the following project partners:

Icelandic Tourism Research Centre
University of Iceland – Department of Geography & Tourism
University of Iceland - Hornafjordur Regional Research Centre
University of Wageningen, the Netherlands – Division of Environmental System Analysis
Vatnajökull National Park
The Realm of Vatnajökull 
At Ease with the Elements

The grant will officially be submitted on Monday December 1st.