Changes in climate are disproportionately affecting northern latitudes, and this is altering relationships between human societies and their environments. Rural communities in boreal Alaska rely heavily on natural resources for provisional and cultural purposes, and have reported challenges in resource acquisition caused by contemporary environmental changes. Environmental disturbances associated with climate change, such as shifts in fire regime, hydrologic changes affecting waterways, thawing of permafrost, extreme weather events, and unstable snow and ice conditions, have been qualitatively associated with altered accessibility of subsistence resources. Our research objective was to quantify the impact of disturbances driven by climate change on access to ecosystem services in Interior Alaska. In collaboration with nine rural Alaskan communities, we documented changes observed by subsistence users. Geotagged photos of disturbances that community members encountered while engaged in resource gathering activities were coupled with their interpretation of the impact of the disturbance on their travel, as well as traditional ecological knowledge gathered through comprehensive interviews on the history of environmental disturbances in their subsistence harvest areas.
Results/Conclusions
We identified seven general categories of climatic change influencing access to resources by rural residents: ice conditions, snow conditions, water levels, erosion, sedimentation, vegetative community composition, and weather. We then used frequency and sensitivity information for the disturbances reported to conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify which disturbances were having the greatest impact on travel. Preliminary analyses indicate that changes in ice conditions, snow conditions, and water levels are the most detrimental to rural residents’ abilities to travel and access subsistence resources across the Interior. Additional analyses indicated that vulnerability was related to whether a location was connected to the road network. Communities connected to the road network were less vulnerable to all environmental conditions encountered than remote communities, and erosion had a greater relative influence on resource access for remote communities than it did for locations on the road network. Through combining traditional ecological knowledge and scientific analysis, we characterized the impact of climate change on travel networks used for subsistence resource harvest across the study region and provide information that collaborating communities can use to optimize community resilience and self-reliance. These data can be used by agencies and local communities to foster adaptation to a rapidly changing climate.