The Synergistic Effects of Climate Change and Land Use
in the Upper Yukon River Watershed

• Overview of the Project
• User Needs
• References

Overview of the Project

The Yukon River flows from east to west, from Canada across Alaska for a distance of 1,978 miles (3,185 kilometers), draining an area of about 200 square miles (516,200 square kilometers) on the Alaskan side of the international border. The Yukon River flows across Alaska’s interior through a level stretch of land called the Yukon Flats. There are seven rural communities in the Yukon Flats, with Fort Yukon as the primary hub and service center; all of the villages are home to a large Alaskan Gwich’in and a smaller Koyukon Athabascan population (Figure 1, Table 1). Partly because of an important historical and cultural connection to hunting and fishing, and partly because of the fact that a large segment of the population now lives below the poverty level as defined by the federal government, rural residents throughout the Yukon Flats depend on subsistence hunting and fishing and country foods (plants and animals) for survival and community well-being.

As people who depend on resources from the land for their livelihood, they are vulnerable to change in multiple dimensions, including but not limited to climate change (Gerlach, Turner and Henry, 2005). Economic security or insecurity may be measured by a host of variables (Cordell and Bergstrom 1999; Costanza et al. 2001), with some directly related to climate, and others more directly related to the economic, institutional, and state and regulatory frameworks that structure and influence everyday activities (Barnett 2005; O’Brien and Leichenko 2005). Annual and decadal scale changes in climate, with attendant shifts in seasonal weather patterns affect interior rural land use through disruptions or unanticipated changes in water levels in transportation corridors such as the Yukon River, which connects the Yukon Flats to larger service hubs such as Fairbanks and Anchorage, or in the Porcupine River, a primary transportation corridor into traditional hunting, fishing and plant collecting areas. Predictability in weather most immediately affects local and regional land use. Whether by river or by air, predictability is essential to effective use of the transportation link that provides access to bulk foods, building supplies, fuel and many of the other services that rural Alaskans have come to count on. Mid- to late 20th century warming has intensified the magnitude, frequency and timing of boreal forest fires, and prolonged periods of drought have forced local hunters to realign their access routes into traditional hunting territories, among other unanticipated changes. Drought and fire similarly change the local terrestrial system in ways that have caused shifts in the distribution and number of terrestrial species that humans depend on for subsistence; it may also be affecting salmon spawning areas through increases in water temperature and water debris through erosion, and boreal forest quality and resilience through insect outbreaks (Juday et al. 1998:23-49).

The cumulative and synergistic effects of global climate, land use, and economic changes, however defined and measured, create scenarios of real and perceived stability and instability in interior rural Alaskan communities, with local stakeholders having relatively little access to and influence over scientific findings, policy development, and decision making about the same by federal and state land managers. While it is true that the Alaskan interior and the interior rural villages have not been the focus of as much climatic, ecological or ethnographic study as have the Arctic coastal and marine systems and communities, this situation is beginning to improve, in part because of efforts by the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG) to develop local and regional scale science and policy making initiatives, and in part because of collaborative work in nutritional ecology, traditional, and alternative food systems between CATG and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

While federal and state land managers, university and agency researchers working within and across the ecological and climate sciences have much to learn, local stakeholders now at least have a formal window into how, why and where decisions are made about local adaptations and local land use. In spite of improvements, however, uncertainties about the climate still exist in the present, as well as the future, with community and individual cultural and economic health at stake for many rural Alaskan communities. Resource development activities and associated impacts, whether on the opportunity or constraint side of the equation, occur today in a framework of climate change and globalization, a matrix that links all of the Circumpolar Nations to other parts of the globe. Where Alaska’s North Slope has experienced thirty or so years of intensive oil and gas development (National Research Council, 2003) and communities have had time to build adaptive capacity or not, the same is not true for the Yukon Flats villages; these villages may be on the verge of similarly intensive and extensive oil and gas development, and are experiencing other changes in land use resulting from federal decisions about how best to accommodate the needs of industry, whether opposed to local interests or not.

User Needs

An integrated assessment of the consequences of the impacts of climate variability and change and stakeholder needs for weather and climate products will be strategically implemented throughout the five year project. Access to natural resources for both subsistence and economic development is becoming increasingly difficult as climate-driven changes in seasonality affect snow and ice conditions that, in turn, impair transportation to resource harvest areas. In addition, the proposed land exchange between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Doyon Ltd., the Regional Native Corporation, may well result in new increases in oil and gas exploration and infrastructure developments that will have direct, indirect, and cumulative social and ecological consequences for rural communities in the Yukon Flats. Community capacity building and/or mitigation of potential impacts will require developing a better scientific data base, dissemination of such information through better and more “user friendly” scientific products to and through the local communities, and more active incorporation of local stakeholder needs for information with respect to planning for both the present and the future.

Multiple stakeholders manage and use the natural resources in the Yukon Flats Basin, including state and federal agencies and indigenous communities who still rely heavily on fishing, hunting, and gathering for subsistence. Throughout the project we will work with these stakeholders to assess perceptions about risks and vulnerabilities, and to build capacity for coping with a changing climate and mitigation of impacts from those changes.

This project builds on existing work by work by Gerlach (UAF) and Fleener (CATG) and doctoral student, Shannon McNeeley in the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Anthropology department and Resilience and Adaptation program, including a repository/database of all available data and literature related to weather, climate variability, and land use change for the Yukon Flats Basin and interviews with local Elders and resource users. Existing data includes local perceptions and observations of climate change, and understandings of how the changing climate impacts the social ecological system.

This project also builds on baseline information about traditional food systems, nutritional ecology and biochemistry of the Yukon Flats communities, leveraging an existing NSF grant (“Sustainability and Stewardship Alaska”). Particular attention is placed on perceptions of food availability and quality as related to climate and other changes in land use, and on the real and perceived threats of contaminants and other persistent organic pollutants in the boreal ecosystem, including both the terrestrial and riverine components. This research aims to assess the existing data base and contribute to developing an expanded and more accessible data base related to the synergistic effects of climate and land use changes on traditional food systems (Gerlach et al. 2005), including existing and projected changes in seasonality and how and under what conditions the seasonal distribution and abundance of critical resources is out of sync with the existing regulatory framework of hunting and fishing seasons established by state and federal agencies. This is an issue that has been identified as important by local stakeholders in the Yukon Flats.

The Yukon Flats project builds on lessons learned and product development from the North Slope ACCAP activities. While the Yukon Flats presents unique challenges in a different ecosystem than the North Slope, there are ample opportunities to incorporate relevant knowledge and product design from one region to another. Partner agencies in the North Slope are also the same relevant stakeholder agencies in the Yukon Flats. The central partner organization for this project is the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG), which represents the tribal chiefs of the seven regional villages on matters of natural resource management and development, as well as about matters of subsistence and health and well-being for all village resource users. The collaboration will further be enhanced by contributions by John Walsh on climate, Terry Chapin on fire ecology and ecosystem issues, and Larry Duffy on contaminants, perceptions of food quality, the impact of contaminants on ecosystem stability and change, and on the relationship between contaminants flows and concentrations and climate change.

References

Barnett, J. and N. Adger. 2005. “Security and climate change: towards an improved understanding.” Presented at, Human Security and Climate Change, An International Workshop. Asker, Norway. June 20-23, 2005.

Cordell, H. K. and J.C. Bergstrom (eds). 1999. Integrating Social Sciences with Ecosystem Management: Human Dimensions in Assessment, Policy and Management. Sagamore Publishing. Champaign, IL.

Costanza, R., B.S. Low, E. Ostrom, and J. Wilson, eds. 2001. Institutions, Ecosystems, and Sustainability. CRC Press, Lewis Publishers. Boca Rotan, FL.

Gerlach, S.C., A.M. Turner, L. Henry. 2005 In press. Regional Foods, Food Systems, Security and Risk in Rural Alaska. In, Circumpolar Environmental Science: Current Issues in Resources, Health and Policy. University of Alaska Press.

Juday, G.P., R.A. Ott, D.W. Valentine, and V.A. Barber. 1998. Forests, Climate Stress, Insects and Fire. In, Weller G. and P.A. Anderson (eds.) Implications of Global Change in Alaska and Bering Sea Region. Proceedings of a Workshop, June 1997. Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

National Research Council. 2003. Cumulative Environmental Effects of Alaskan North Slope Oil and Gas Activities. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

O’Brien, Karen and Robin Leichenko. 2005. “Climate change, equity and human security.” Presented at, Human Security and Climate Change, An International Workshop. Asker, Norway. June 21-23, 2005.