University Relations 202 Eielson Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7520
(907)474-7581 Fax (907)474-6492
fynews@uaf.edu
CAN ARCTIC HUMAN COMMUNITIES SUSTAIN THEMSELVES
Fairbanks, Alaska — The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.8 million grant to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research to investigate the "Sustainability of Arctic Communities."
Co-principal investigators of the four-year, multi-university "Sustainability Project" are UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology (IAB) Director Robert White and UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) Director Jack Kruse.
According to Kruse, communities in Alaska's Arctic for the past 25 years have sustained a way of life based on a combination of harvests of caribou, marine mammals and other resources; cash incomes derived from petroleum revenues and other resources; and local control exercised through tribal organizations, regional governments and Native-owned corporations.
The Kruse and White study will integrate existing research on caribou, vegetation, subsistence, and industry with the goal of understanding how regional, and national policies can help to sustain human communities in the Arctic.
While state and national entities will benefit from the "Sustainability Project," Kruse said that the primary focus is U.S. and Canadian communities
heavily dependent on caribou.
-more-
"Policymakers would like to understand the possible implications of development and global change on subsistence, the cash economy, and the ability of local communities to control their futures,” Kruse said.
White, an adviser to the International Committee on Management of the Porcupine Caribou Herd, is a professor of zoophysiology and nutrition at UAF and a fellow in the Arctic Institute of North America.
His major research interests include the nutritional and physiological adaptations of animals to the environment; nutritional and physiological ecology; and modeling of physiological and ecological processes.
Institutions collaborating with UAF and UAA on the “Sustainability Project” include the University of Colorado Boulder; University of California, Berkeley; University of Minnesota; Dartmouth College; University of Arkansas; Grinnell College; Canadian Wildlife Service; U.S. National Biological Service; Alaska Department of Fish and Game; North Slope Borough; Northwest Arctic Borough; and through the Canadian EMAN Project, the Gwich'in Renewable Resource Board; Inuvialuit Game Council; Canadian Porcupine Caribou Management Board; Council of Yukon Indians: Vuntut Renewable Resource Council. The Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments has also been invited to collaborate.
The interdisciplinary group will focus on relationships between global
changes in climate and development and changes in vegetation, caribou
populations and movements, human use of caribou, wage employment, and perceived local control.
-30-
CONTACT: UAF Institute of Arctic Biology Director Bob White (907) 474-7648, ISER Director Jack Kruse (907) 786-7743, UAF Public Information Officer Debra Damron
(907) 474-7122, or UAA Information Officer Nancy Killoran (907)786-1431
UAF news releases also available electronically via the Internet. To view news releases using Gopher, type: telnet info.alaska.edu login as: info
Using Mosaic, Netscape or Lynx, type: http://info.alaska.edu