Scientists offer guidelines for coping with climate change in Alaska

Coping with the devastating effects of climate change in Alaska will require institutional nimbleness and a willingness among those living at lower latitudes to “share the pain,” according to the authors of a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The interdisciplinary team of ecologists and social scientists put forward broad strategic guidelines for dealing with dramatically warmer temperatures in Alaska.

“Alaska is way ahead of most of the world in the degree to which it’s already experiencing the effects of global warming,” said coauthor Erika Zavaleta, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“It’s warmer and drier, winter ice melts earlier, and forests are under siege from longer, more severe wildfire seasons,” she said. “We need broad policy strategies to deal with the changes, not just reactively but proactively.”

In the paper, “Policy Strategies to Address Sustainability of Alaskan Boreal Forests in Response to a Directionally Changing Climate,” the authors emphasize linkages between global-scale changes and local-scale dynamics, and they present a scientific rationale for a cohesive policy response based on four broad policy strategies:

• Adaptability--Given the unknown trajectories of climate change effects in coming decades, policies must emphasize adaptability and nimbleness; institutions that can adapt and innovate, from the community to agency level, will be of greatest value.

• Resilience—For key parts of Alaska’s economy, ecology, and culture to persist in the face of all this change, social and ecological policies should maximize the involvement of local users in subsistence resource management decisions and should encourage diversity, both economic and ecological. For example, economic diversification away from overwhelming reliance on oil would help buffer the state’s economy from abrupt or catastrophic changes, said Zavaleta.

• Reduce vulnerability--The psychological divide between Alaska and the rest of the United States must be bridged to encourage people in the “Lower 48” to change their behavior and slow global warming, while also working to protect Alaskans who are threatened by ice too thin to support snow machines, coastal erosion, and hard-to-read environmental hazards. “There’s a disconnect between those whose behavior causes climate change and the people who are being most impacted by it,” said Zavaleta.

• Transformation--Institutional barriers to major change must be overcome to facilitate transitions to new strategies, such as adoption of energy policies that could reduce rural Alaskan dependence on oil.

“We tried to address what this crisis will require at all levels, from the individual to the institutional,” said Zavaleta, who has conducted research in Alaska for more than a decade. “The bottom line is that we need a broad approach that remains flexible and responsive to changing circumstances. But we need to get started. Climate change is happening, and in Alaska, people, infrastructure, and vast natural resources are already vulnerable.”

The interdisciplinary team was made up of five ecologists, two anthropologists, a political scientist, an economist, and a historian, who call for the simultaneous pursuit of all four areas of strategic change.

Source: University of California, Santa Cruz

Related stories:

Wilkins Ice Shelf under threat
(PhysOrg.com) -- New rifts have developed on the Wilkins Ice Shelf that could lead to the opening of the ice bridge that has been preventing the ice shelf from disintegrating and breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula.
Scientists Sequence Woolly-Mammoth Genome
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at Penn State are leaders of a team that is the first to report the genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal, according to Webb Miller, professor of biology and of computer science and engineering and one of the project's two leaders. The scientists sequenced the genome of the woolly mammoth, an extinct species of elephant that was adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. They sequenced four billion DNA bases using next-generation DNA-sequencing instruments and a novel approach that reads ancient DNA highly efficiently.
Sedimentary records link Himalayan erosion rates and monsoon intensity through time
Throughout history, the changing fortunes of human societies in Asia have been linked to variations in the precipitation resulting from seasonal monsoons. A new paper published in the British journal Nature Geoscience suggests that variations in monsoon climate over longer time scales also influenced the evolution of the world's highest mountain chain, the Himalaya.
Turtles alter nesting dates due to temperature change
Turtles nesting along the Mississippi River and other areas are altering their nesting dates in response to rising temperatures, says a researcher from Iowa State University.
Saving Sumatra: Indonesia reaches historic agreement
The Indonesian government and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) today announced a bold commitment to protect the remaining forests and critical ecosystems of Sumatra, an Indonesian island that holds some of the world's most diverse – and endangered – forests. The historic agreement represents the first-ever island-wide commitment to protect Sumatra's stunning biodiversity.
Climate change will affect public health -- a call to action
Extreme heat events (EHE), or heat waves, are the most prominent cause of weather-related human mortality in the United States, responsible for more deaths annually than hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes combined. These events, and other climate-related changes in the worldwide environment that directly affect public health, are examined in the November issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. This special issue provides a crucial state-of-the art overview of many of the issues at the intersection of climate change and health.
'Deadly dozen' reports diseases worsened by climate change
Health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society today released a report that lists 12 pathogens that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, with potential impacts to both human and wildlife health and global economies. Called The Deadly Dozen: Wildlife Diseases in the Age of Climate Change, the new report provides examples of diseases that could spread as a result of changes in temperatures and precipitation levels. The best defense, according to the report's authors, is a good offense in the form of wildlife monitoring to detect how these diseases are moving so health professionals can learn and prepare to mitigate their impact.
Long-term study shows effect of climate change on animal diversity
Two species of giraffe, several rhinos and five elephant relatives, along with multitudes of rodents, bush pigs, horses, antelope and apes, once inhabited what is now northern Pakistan.

News discussion:

Global Warming, eh? in Space & Earth science news