Report examines perceptions of environmental change in Arctic community

December 18, 2018

University Relations

UAF and UAA researchers studying perceptions of climate change in a North Slope village have released a report detailing their findings.

“Local Knowledge and Science: Observation of Climate Change in the Nuiqsut Homelands” is the culmination of work by the Northern Test Case of the Alaska Adapting to Changing Environments (ACE) project. Researchers compiled scientific data on North Slope climate change, asked residents of the North Slope community of Nuiqsut to describe their own perceptions of change, and compared the two.

“The report shows that people of Nuiqsut have a deep and nuanced understanding of changes in the landscape of their homelands, and they have a lot to contribute to monitoring and research in the region,” said UAF Professor Emeritus of Resource Policy and Management Gary Kofinas, leader of the test case and co-author of the report.

Scientific findings in the document indicate numerous changes over recent decades, including warmer winters, earlier spring snowmelt, earlier springs and later falls, thawing permafrost, shrinking lakes, increased river erosion, and decreasing moose and caribou populations. Researchers interviewed 28 Nuiqsut residents, most of them active subsistence harvesters, about their perceptions of environmental change in order to see the level of agreement among local residents and how local knowledge compared to scientific data.

Interviewees agreed about many areas of change but were split in others. For example, 60% agreed that winters are warming and 65% agreed there are fewer moose around Nuiqsut. But 25% reported that fall snow is coming later versus 33% who said earlier, and 46% said snowfall has decreased versus 27% who say it is unchanged. In every category, roughly 10% to 30% of interviewees reported no change.

“It’s impressive to see the vast amount of knowledge that local residents and scientists have procured and the amount of agreement,” noted Jen Schmidt, a Term Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Management at UAA and lead author of the document. “That being said, there are still uncertainties and knowledge gaps about how and why the environment is changing.”

Schmidt noted that discrepancies in knowledge tended to occur when different scales of observation were used or when terminology differed between instrumented and observed data. The report suggests numerous other possible reasons for discrepancies, such as people making observations in different places, having access to information sources beyond their observations, or holding different perspectives on what constitutes change. Schmidt said the findings present many possibilities for further study and collaboration. “High variability in knowledge provides an opportunity for local knowledge holders and scientists to work together, learn from each other, and increase our understanding of the environment, especially in a rapidly changing world.”

The Northern Test Case was one of three regional test cases encompassed in the ACE project, which began in 2012 and concludes this month. The project was conducted by the Alaska National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Alaska NSF EPSCoR) and funded by the NSF and the State of Alaska. The Northern Test Case conducted research in cooperation with the Kuukpik Subsistence Oversight Panel, a local body that addresses resource issues in the region.

The report is available on the Alaska EPSCoR website at http://www.alaska.edu/epscor/files/epscor/NTC/Nuiqsut-Community-Report.pdf or https://bit.ly/2Bt06ZD.