Download or read book Alaska s Changing Wildland Environment written by Z. Grabinski and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intensified pattern of wildfire is emerging in Alaska as rapidly increasing temperatures and longer growing seasons alter the state's environment. Both tundra and boreal forest regions are seeing larger and more frequent fires. The impacts of these fires are felt across the state. The wildland fire environment of Alaska presents many unique opportunities and challenges. In response to changing wildfire patterns, Alaska's fire management agencies are adapting quickly. The use of remote sensing tools, such as data from satellites, and science-based decision making have been a critical component in responding to intensified wildfire seasons. This publication aims to convey the rapidly changing patterns of wildfire in Alaska by looking into the phases of fire. Patterns emerging in the 21st century are the primary focus, with earlier histories of management, climate, and fire being drawn upon for context. The Alaska Fire Science Consortium strives to increase understanding of the critical role of wildfire within the state, by facilitating science delivery, outreach, and education.
Download or read book Climate Change written by J. B. Haufler and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summarizes potential impacts that are likely from predicted climate change (CC) in Southern Alaska (SA), identifies on-going collaborative efforts directed at climate change, and suggests some possible responses that the Alaska Region (AR) could take to address this challenge. Contents: (1) Intro.; (2) Overview of the AR; (3) Ecosystem Services of the SC and SE Landscapes; (4) CC Threats to Ecosystem Services in Southern Coastal Alaska: Observed Changes in Alaska¿s Climate; Predicted CC in Alaska Climate; (5) Impacts of CC on Ecosystem Services: Changing Sea Levels; Increased Ocean Temp. and Changing Circulation Patterns; Increased Ocean Acidification; Increased Storm Intensities; Changes to Stream Temp. and Flows; Loss of Glaciers; Changes to Wetlands; Forest Temp. and Precipitation Changes; Increases in Invasive Species; (6) Initiatives for CC in Southern Alaska Coastal Landscapes; (7) Strategic Plan for CC. Figures.
Download or read book Alaska s Changing Arctic written by John E. Hobbie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this edition of the Long Term Ecological Research Network series, editors John Hobbie and George Kling and 58 co-authors synthesize the findings from the NSF-funded Arctic LTER project based at Toolik Lake, Alaska, a site that has been active since the mid-1970s. The book presents research on the core issues of climate-change science in the treeless arctic region of Alaska. As a whole, it examines both terrestrial and freshwater-aquatic ecosystems, and their three typical habitats: tundra, streams, and lakes. The book provides a history of the Toolik Lake LTER site, and discusses its present condition and future outlook. It features contributions from top scientists from many fields, creating a multidisciplinary survey of the Alaskan arctic ecosystem. Chapter topics include glacial history, climatology, land-water interactions, mercury found in the Alaskan arctic, and the response of these habitats to environmental change. The final chapter predicts the consequences that arctic Alaska faces due to global warming and climate change, and discusses the future ecology of the LTER site in the region. Alaska's Changing Arctic is the definitive scientific survey of the past, present, and future of the ecology of the Alaskan arctic.
Download or read book Alaska s Changing Boreal Forest written by F. Stuart Chapin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boreal forest is the northern-most woodland biome, whose natural history is rooted in the influence of low temperature and high-latitude. Alaska's boreal forest is now warming as rapidly as the rest of Earth, providing an unprecedented look at how this cold-adapted, fire-prone forest adjusts to change. This volume synthesizes current understanding of the ecology of Alaska's boreal forests and describes their unique features in the context of circumpolar and global patterns. It tells how fire and climate contributed to the biome's current dynamics. As climate warms and permafrost (permanently frozen ground) thaws, the boreal forest may be on the cusp of a major change in state. The editors have gathered a remarkable set of contributors to discuss this swift environmental and biotic transformation. Their chapters cover the properties of the forest, the changes it is undergoing, and the challenges these alterations present to boreal forest managers. In the first section, the reader can absorb the geographic and historical context for understanding the boreal forest. The book then delves into the dynamics of plant and animal communities inhabiting this forest, and the biogeochemical processes that link these organisms. In the last section the authors explore landscape phenomena that operate at larger temporal and spatial scales and integrates the processes described in earlier sections. Much of the research on which this book is based results from the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research Program. Here is a synthesis of the substantial literature on Alaska's boreal forest that should be accessible to professional ecologists, students, and the interested public.
Download or read book Long term Ecological Change in the Northern Gulf of Alaska written by R.B. Spies and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2006-12-12 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive text is a major synthesis on ecological change in the Gulf of Alaska. It encompasses the structural and annual changes, forces of change, long-ecological changes in the atmosphere and ocean, plankton, fish, birds and mammals, and the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. With 5 major sections, Long-term Ecological Change in the Northern Gulf of Alaska first describes the physical features, the atmosphere and physical oceanography, the annual production cycle, the forage base for higher animals and trophic transfer, and the adaptations for survival in this changing environment for 9 portal species. Then, the major forces of change are introduced: climate, geophysics, fisheries and harvesting, species interactions, disease and contaminants. Next, the long-term records of change in physical factors and biological populations are presented, as well as the potential reasons for the biological changes. Following is the history of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its long-term effects. And, finally, the emergent properties of the ecosystem are discussed and an attempt is made to weigh the importance of the major forcing factors in terms of their temporal and spatial scales of influence. * Examines important data on long-term change in the ecosystem and the forcing factors that are responsible for it * Provides an account of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill with emphasis on the long-term effects * Describes the effects of climate change, geophysical change, species interactions, harvesting, disease, the 1989 oil spill, and marine contaminants on key populations of marine organisms
Download or read book Early Warming written by Nancy Lord and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2011-01-10 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Shishmaref, Alaska, new seawalls are constructed while residents navigate the many practical and bureaucratic obstacles to moving their entire island village to higher ground. Farther south, inland hunters and fishermen set out to grow more of their own food—and to support the reintroduction of wood bison, an ancient species well suited to expected habitat changes. First Nations people in Canada team with conservationists to protect land for both local use and environmental resilience. In Early Warming, Alaskan Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, takes a cutting–edge look at how communities in the North—where global warming is amplified and climate–change effects are most immediate—are responding with desperation and creativity. This beautifully written and measured narrative takes us deep into regions where the indigenous people who face life–threatening change also demonstrate impressive conservation ethics and adaptive capacities. Underpinned by a long acquaintance with the North and backed with scientific and political sophistication, Lord's vivid account brings the challenges ahead for us all into ice–water clarity.
Download or read book Climate Change Impacts in the United States written by U.S. Global Change Research Program and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Alaska has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the nation, bringing widespread impacts. Sea ice is rapidly receding and glaciers are shrinking. Thawing permafrost is leading to more wildfire, and affecting infrastructure and wildlife habitat. Rising ocean temperatures and acidification will alter valuable marine fisheries. Explore how climate change is affecting Alaska." --
Download or read book How Does Climate Change Influence Alaska s Vegetation written by Thomas Alan Ager and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 2 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book North by 2020 written by Amy Lauren Lovecraft and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originating from a series of workshops held at the Alaska Forum of the Fourth International Polar Year, this interdisciplinary volume addresses a host of current concerns regarding the ecology and rapid transformation of the arctic. Concentrating on the most important linked social-ecological systems, including fresh water, marine resources, and oil and gas development, this volume explores opportunities for sustainable development from a variety of perspectives, among them social sciences, natural and applied sciences, and the arts. Individual chapters highlight expressions of climate change in dance, music, and film, as well as from an indigenous knowledge–based perspective.
Download or read book Whale Snow written by Chie Sakakibara and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a mythical creature, the whale has been responsible for many transformations in the world. It is an enchanting being that humans have long felt a connection to. In the contemporary environmental imagination, whales are charismatic megafauna feeding our environmentalism and aspirations for a better and more sustainable future. Using multispecies ethnography, Whale Snow explores how everyday the relatedness of the Iñupiat of Arctic Alaska and the bowhead whale forms and transforms “the human” through their encounters with modernity. Whale Snow shows how the people live in the world that intersects with other beings, how these connections came into being, and, most importantly, how such intimate and intense relations help humans survive the social challenges incurred by climate change. In this time of ecological transition, exploring multispecies relatedness is crucial as it keeps social capacities to adapt relational, elastic, and resilient. In the Arctic, climate, culture, and human resilience are connected through bowhead whaling. In Whale Snow we see how climate change disrupts this ancient practice and, in the process, affects a vital expression of Indigenous sovereignty. Ultimately, though, this book offers a story of hope grounded in multispecies resilience.
Download or read book Landscape Sensitivity to Climate Change in Northern Alaska written by Benjamin V. Gaglioti and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The climate is now changing rapidly at high-latitudes, and observing how the Arctic and sub-Arctic environment responded to prehistoric climate changes can hold valuable lessons as we adapt in the future. This dissertation presents four studies that use biogeochemical proxies to reconstruct environmental changes in northern Alaska over the last 40,000 years (40 ka). These records are used to infer how the environment responded to climate changes at different locations and over varying spatial and temporal scales. The first study presents a time series of stable oxygen isotopes contained in radiocarbon-dated (14C) willow wood to quantify the nature and rates of climate change on the North Slope of Alaska over the last 40 ka. The second study examines how past temperature fluctuations affected permafrost thaw and the release of ancient carbon over the last 14.5 ka by compiling 14C-age offsets in the sediment of a small lake in the Brooks Range foothills. In the third study, I document human-caused changes to boreal wildfire frequency near the city of Fairbanks to test whether the primeval forest type and permafrost in the surrounding watershed will be vulnerable to more frequent fires in the future. The fourth study examines how ice age (40-9 ka) climate changes impacted the activity of sand dunes, vegetation productivity, and the dynamics of permafrost recorded in a unique sedimentary exposure located near the Arctic Coastal Plain on Alaska’s North Slope. Overall, I present several new and interesting approaches and findings stemming from this work. Ancient willow isotopes show that between 17 and 8 ka, during the time when ice sheets were in retreat worldwide, temperatures fluctuated widely on the North Slope mostly in concert with those in Greenland. Most notably, rapid changes in temperature and moisture occurred during the initial deglacial warming (ca. 16 ka), and during the Younger Dryas cold period (12.9-11.7 ka). These climate trends were amplified on the North Slope by changes in sea-ice extent in adjacent seas, which also controlled the availability of local precipitation evaporated from these seas. However, these warming and cooling trends were occasionally dampened by the advent of more maritime climate accompanying sea-level rise during the early Holocene, and by the breakdown of the atmospheric circulation patterns created by continental ice sheets in North America during the last glacial maximum. Over the last 7 ka, a gradual, insolation-driven cooling trend ended in ca. AD 1850 when the exceptional rates of recent warming began that continue to today. I found that the vegetation, permafrost and sand dunes in Arctic Alaska were sensitive to external climate forcing, but their responses were moderated by strong, internal feedbacks, including the temperature-buffering effects that thick peat layers have on the underlying permafrost. Prior to peat buildup in the early Holocene, the timing of sedimentary transitions indicate permafrost and aeolian processes were highly responsive to the volatile climate during the last ice age, which included Greenland interstadials. This incessant ice age climate change, coupled with the complex biophysical landscape responses that are particular to the unglaciated Arctic, helped maintain the ecological mosaic of the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem. Prehistoric warming events triggered permafrost thaw and the release of ancient carbon during the Bølling-Allerød (14.5-12.9 ka) and early Holocene warm period (11.7-8.0 ka), and this release is likely to occur again given enough warming. In the boreal forest watershed near Fairbanks, Alaska, the current ecological regime has remained intact despite a three-fold increase in pre-settlement wildfires during the Fairbanks gold rush (1902-1940). Once continued warming surpasses the buffering effects of the current internal feedbacks of the North Slope and boreal forest and the threshold for change is reached, more dynamic aeolian and permafrost processes may again dominate as they did on the more unstable and diverse ice age landscape. Overall, the results of this work will be useful for understanding how climate and landscape change in northern Alaska will respond to global climate forcing in the future.
Download or read book Assessing Effects of Climate Change on Access to Ecosystem Services in Rural Alaska written by Helen S. Cold and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the planet, climate change is altering the way human societies interact with the environment. Amplified climate change at high latitudes is significantly altering the structure and function of ecosystems, creating challenges and necessitating adaptation by societies in the region that depend on local ecosystem services for their livelihoods. Rural communities in Interior Alaska rely on plants and animals for food, clothing, fuel and shelter. Previous research suggests that climate-induced changes in environmental conditions are challenging the abilities of rural residents to travel across the land and access local resources, but detailed information on the nature and effect of specific conditions is lacking. My objectives were to identify climate-related environmental conditions affecting subsistence access, and then estimate travel and access vulnerability to those environmental conditions. I collaborated with nine Interior Alaskan communities within the Yukon River basin and provided local residents with camera-equipped GPS units to document environmental conditions directly affecting access for 12 consecutive months. I also conducted comprehensive interviews with research participants to incorporate the effects of environmental conditions not documented with GPS units. Among the nine communities collaborating on this research, 18 harvesters documented 479 individual observations of environmental conditions affecting their travel with GPS units. Environmental conditions were categorized into seven condition types. I then ranked categories of conditions using a vulnerability index that incorporated both likelihood (number of times a condition was documented) and sensitivity (magnitude of the effect from the condition) information derived from observations and interviews. Changes in ice conditions, erosion, vegetative community composition and water levels had the greatest overall effect on travel and access to subsistence resources. Environmental conditions that impeded travel corridors, including waterways and areas with easily traversable vegetation (such as grass/sedge meadows and alpine tundra), more strongly influenced communities off the road network than those connected by roads. Combining local ecological knowledge and scientific analysis presents a broad understanding of the effects of climate change on access to subsistence resources, and provides information that collaborating communities can use to optimize adaptation and self-reliance.
Download or read book State of Change written by United States. National Park Service. Alaska Regional Office and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fierce Climate Sacred Ground written by Elizabeth Marino and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Slopovers written by Stephen J. Pyne and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is not simply a federation of states but a confederation of regions. Some have always held national attention, some just for a time. Slopovers examines three regions that once dominated the national narrative and may now be returning to prominence. The Mid-American oak woodlands were the scene of vigorous settlement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and thus the scene of changing fire practices. The debate over the origin of the prairies—by climate or fire—foreshadowed the more recent debate about fire in oak and hickory hardwoods. In both cases, today’s thinking points to the critical role of fire. The Pacific Northwest was the great pivot between laissez-faire logging and state-sponsored conservation and the fires that would accompany each. Then fire faded as an environmental issue. But it has returned over the past decade like an avenging angel, forcing the region to again consider the defining dialectic between axe and flame. And Alaska—Alaska is different, as everyone says. It came late to wildland fire protection, then managed an extraordinary transfiguration into the most successful American region to restore something like the historic fire regime. But Alaska is also a petrostate, and climate change may be making it the vanguard of what the Anthropocene will mean for American fire overall. Slopovers collates surveys of these three regions into the national narrative. With a unique mixture of journalism, history, and literary imagination, renowned fire expert Stephen J. Pyne shows how culture and nature, fire from nature and fire from people, interact to shape our world with three case studies in public policy and the challenging questions they pose about the future we will share with fire.
Download or read book Alaska Regional Plan written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Climate Crisis in the Northwest and Alaska written by Brienna Rossiter and published by North Star Editions, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This urgent title examines the typical climate of the Northwest and Alaska, how climate change is affecting it, and ways the region can fight against and adapt to the climate emergency.
