Permafrost Monthly Alert (PMA): A Program to Promote, Preserve and Enhance Frozen Ground Knowledge

The U.S. Permafrost Association (USPA) and the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) have jointly provided a monthly catalog of the world-wide, permafrost literature since 2012. The Permafrost Monthly Alert (PMA) program produces professionally reviewed reference material on a regular monthly schedule and results are made available in multiple locations. The monthly-updates portion of the PMA program are available through the USPA web site (http://uspermafrost.org). The current seven-year collection includes over 75 monthly updates with a total of 5,800 citations. The vast majority of the references have abstracts and are organized into four major categories: journals, conferences, theses and reports. The monthly accessions are uploaded by AGI to the Bibliography of Cold Regions Science and Technology (COLD), a searchable database that includes more than 29,000 permafrost references.

Bibliographic references on the USPA website are easily searchable with internet search engines. An example using "Alaska" and "permafrost" as search terms produce 659 records. The number of different search engines that index the USPA website exceeded 20 for each of the last four years. For 2017, the total search engine hits exceeded 90,000. Google search routines exceeded 6,000 hits each year since 2012. Content matters as much as reference age. As an example, the March 2012 PMA monthly reference listing is in the top four viewed monthly pages over a five-year period. Average annual usage of the service exceeds 10,000 inquiries (views by readers) in the last three years, with over 55,000 views since 2012.

In addition to serving academic communities, the PMA is a valuable resource to industry, private institutions, engineering firms, government agencies and K-12 education programs. By providing current and historical sources of information, the PMA program is a readily available mechanism for conveying scientific information to decision-makers and the public. Future improvements to the PMA program will include efforts to increase engineering topics and reference sources, evaluations for using various search engines and improving applications for K-12 education programs.