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"Climatic changes Alaska"
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Ellavut / Our Yup'ik World and Weather
Ellavut / Our Yup'ik World and Weather is a result of nearly ten years of gatherings among Yup'ik elders to document the qanruyutet (words of wisdom) that guide their interactions with the environment. In an effort to educate their own young people as well as people outside the community, the elders discussed the practical skills necessary to live in a harsh environment, stressing the ethical and philosophical aspects of the Yup'ik relationship with the land, ocean, snow, weather, and environmental change, among many other elements of the natural world.
At every gathering, at least one elder repeated the Yup'ik adage, \"The world is changing following its people.\" The Yup'ik see environmental change as directly related not just to human actions, such as overfishing or burning fossil fuels, but also to human interactions. The elders encourage young people to learn traditional rules and proper behavior--to act with compassion and restraint--in order to reverse negative impacts on their world. They speak not only to educate young people on the practical skills they need to survive but also on the knowing and responsive nature of the world in which they live.
eBook
Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground
With three roads and a population of just over 500 people,
Shishmaref, Alaska seems like an unlikely center of the climate
change debate. But the island, home to Iñupiaq Eskimos who still
live off subsistence harvesting, is falling into the sea, and
climate change is, at least in part, to blame. While countries
sputter and stall over taking environmental action, Shishmaref is
out of time.
Publications from the New York Times to
Esquire have covered this disappearing village, yet few
have taken the time to truly show the community and the two
millennia of traditions at risk. In Fierce Climate, Sacred
Ground , Elizabeth Marino brings Shishmaref into sharp focus as
a place where people in a close-knit, determined community are
confronting the realities of our changing planet every day. She
shows how physical dangers challenge lives, while the stress and
uncertainty challenge culture and identity. Marino also draws on
Shishmaref's experiences to show how disasters and the outcomes of
climate change often fall heaviest on those already burdened with
other social risks and often to communities who have contributed
least to the problem. Stirring and sobering, Fierce Climate,
Sacred Ground proves that the consequences of unchecked
climate change are anything but theoretical.
eBook
Kivalina
For the people of Kivalina, Alaska, the price of further climate change denial could be the complete devastation of their lives and culture. Their village must be relocated to survive, and neither the fossil fuel giants nor the U.S. government are willing to take full responsibility.
eBook
Recent burning of boreal forests exceeds fire regime limits of the past 10,000 years
Wildfire activity in boreal forests is anticipated to increase dramatically, with far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. Paleorecords are indispensible for elucidating boreal fire regime dynamics under changing climate, because fire return intervals and successional cycles in these ecosystems occur over decadal to centennial timescales. We present charcoal records from 14 lakes in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska, one of the most flammable ecoregions of the boreal forest biome, to infer causes and consequences of fire regime change over the past 10,000 y. Strong correspondence between charcoal-inferred and observational fire records shows the fidelity of sedimentary charcoal records as archives of past fire regimes. Fire frequency and area burned increased ∼6,000–3,000 y ago, probably as a result of elevated landscape flammability associated with increased Picea mariana in the regional vegetation. During the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; ∼1,000–500 cal B.P.), the period most similar to recent decades, warm and dry climatic conditions resulted in peak biomass burning, but severe fires favored less-flammable deciduous vegetation, such that fire frequency remained relatively stationary. These results suggest that boreal forests can sustain high-severity fire regimes for centuries under warm and dry conditions, with vegetation feedbacks modulating climate–fire linkages. The apparent limit to MCA burning has been surpassed by the regional fire regime of recent decades, which is characterized by exceptionally high fire frequency and biomass burning. This extreme combination suggests a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity. However, vegetation dynamics similar to feedbacks that occurred during the MCA may stabilize the fire regime, despite additional warming.
Journal Article
Into the thaw : witnessing wonder amid the Arctic climate crisis
Forty years ago, the park ranger Jon Waterman took his first journey into the Alaskan Arctic, to the Noatak headwaters. He was astonished by the abundant wildlife, the strange landscape, and its otherworldly light--how the \"frequent rain showers glow like lemonade poured out of the sky.\" Taken with a new sense of wonder, he began to explore the North on several trips in the 1980s. After a 30-year absence from the Noatak, he returned with his son in 2021. Amid a now-flooded river missing the once-plentiful caribou, he was shocked and heartbroken by the changes. The following year, in 2022, he took one final journey \"into the thaw\" to document--for this lushly illustrated and scholarly book--the environmental and cultural changes wrought by the climate crisis.
BOOK
Extralimital terrestrials: A reassessment of range limits in Alaska’s land mammals
Understanding and mitigating the effects of anthropogenic climate change on species distributions requires the ability to track range shifts over time. This is particularly true for species occupying high-latitude regions, which are experiencing more extreme climate change than the rest of the world. In North America, the geographic ranges of many mammals reach their northernmost extent in Alaska, positioning this region at the leading edge of climate-induced distribution change. Over a decade has elapsed since the publication of the last spatial assessments of terrestrial mammals in the state. We compared public occurrence records against commonly referenced range maps to evaluate potential extralimital records and develop repeatable baseline range maps. We compared occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility for 61 terrestrial mammal species native to mainland Alaska against a variety of range estimates (International Union for Conservation of Nature, Alaska Gap Analysis Project, and the published literature). We mapped extralimital records and calculated proportions of occurrences encompassed by range extents, measured mean direction and distance to prior range margins, evaluated predictive accuracy of published species models, and highlighted observations on federal lands in Alaska. Range comparisons identified 6,848 extralimital records for 39 of 61 (63.9%) terrestrial mainland Alaskan species. On average, 95.5% of Alaska Gap Analysis Project occurrence records and ranges were deemed accurate (i.e., > 90.0% correct) for 31 of 37 species, but overestimated extents for 13 species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature range maps encompassed 68.1% of occurrence records and were > 90% accurate for 17 of 39 species. Extralimital records represent either improved sampling and digitization or actual geographic range expansions. Here we provide new data-driven range maps, update standards for the archiving of museum-quality locational records and offer recommendations for mapping range changes for monitoring and conservation.
Journal Article