Arctic Research at UAA

Fran UlmerDirector

Institute of Social and Economic Research

Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)

• Mission: ISER enhances the well-being of Alaskans and others, through non-partisan research that helps people understand social and economic systems and supports informed public and private decision-making.

• ISER pursues its mission by: focusing attention on critical economic and social issues in Alaska, the Arctic and similar regions; engaging in basic and applied research leading to better understanding of those issues; and disseminating knowledge through publications, community involvement, public service and teaching.

ISER Overview

• Established by the Alaska Legislature in 1961• Staff: 30 total, including faculty, research

associates, and support personnel• Budget: 25% state, 75% external funding• State’s largest economic database, regular

forecasts of population, employment growth• Research publications and other products available

at www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu

Selected Recent or Current ISER Research in the Arctic

• Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic• Sustainability of Arctic Communities• Traditional Knowledge and Contaminants• Assessment of Potential Effects of Oil and

Gas Activities in the Arctic • Education projects

Status and Preliminary Results

What is SLiCA?

• An international survey comparing living conditions among Inuit and Saami peoples and the indigenous peoples of Chukotka.

www.arcticlivingconditions.org

SLiCA Overview

ISER has led the U.S. contribution to the research project, “Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic” (SLiCA), which is part of the Sustainable Development Initiative of the Arctic Council. It’s a joint international project, conducting comparative studies of living conditions among the Inuit and Saami peoples of the United States, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as well as the indigenous peoples of the Kola Peninsula and Chukotka in Russia.

SLiCA’s objectives are:• For Arctic Native peoples and researchers

to work together • To include living conditions most relevant

to Arctic peoples. • To advance our understanding of how

living conditions are interrelated. • To improve the basis for decision-making

What is the status of the project?

• Interviewing is complete in Canada and the United States

• Interviewing is underway in Greenland, Chukotka, Sweden, and Norway

• The international team has identified a set of five analysis themes

• We have used Alaska data to provide examples of analysis results

Iñupiat

Inuvialuit

Nunavut

Greenlandic Inuit Saami

Nunavik

Labrador Inuit

Kola Peninsula Saami

Chukotka

Native peoples of the Russian north

YupikSample analysis results based on 663 interviews in the Iñupiat settlement region of Alaska

Preliminary analysis themes• The importance of social relationships and the

standard of living to settlement patterns• The importance of a mixed cash- and harvest/

herding-based economy to living in the Arctic• Relationships between social problems and other

dimensions of living conditions• The influence of educators and missionaries• The influence of policies on living conditions

Hypothesized relationships between social problems and other dimensions of living

conditions

Social Problems

Social Well-being

Sense of local control

Standard of Living

Social support

Hunting -Herding

Employment

Western Education

Cultural Values

Traditional Skills

Civic Participation

Environment

Preliminary SLiCA Results

• When we looked at the relative importance of 22 different dimensions of living conditions to overall well-being, the most important was satisfaction with opportunities to hunt and fish.

• Four factors best explain the likelihood of major depression among indigenous Arctic people:– Satisfaction with life as a whole– Importance of traditional values– Western education level– Participation in domestic production activities like hunting,

herding, and processing

Other Current and Recent ISER Projects with Arctic Communities

• ISER has contributed to the goal of understanding rapid change in the Arctic through the research project, “Sustainability of Arctic Communities." ISER and the Institute for Arctic Biology at UAF collaborated to lead this NSF-funded project which focused on the question of how climate change and development over the next forty years could affect the sustainability of Arctic villages located within and adjacent to the range of the Porcupine caribou herd. For an overview of work under this project, see Jack A. Kruse, et al., “Modeling Sustainability of Arctic Communities: An Interdisciplinary Collaboration of Researchers and Local Knowledge”, www.taiga.net/sustain

• ISER and the Alaska Native Science Commission collaborated under an EPA grant to help communities in Alaska address their concerns about the safety of eating Native foods. Entitled “Traditional Knowledge and Native Foods Project," this recently completed work made contaminant, nutrition, and other relevant information available to communities through a Web site. ISER and the ANSC sponsored a mini-grant program so communities could take action to address their concerns. A major product of this effort is a Web-based "Resource Guide" for communities to use to define and act on their concerns (www.nativeknowledge.org).

• The Arctic Research Commission has actively contributed to making a reality the “Study of Environmental Arctic Change," or SEARCH. ISER faculty have served on the SEARCH Science Steering Committee and organized a biocomplexity workshop to develop the human dimensions of SEARCH. Currently Matt Berman is co-chair of the SEARCH implementation panel “Understanding Change” and Jack Kruse is chair of a second of three SEARCH implementation panels, “Responding to Change.”

• Sharman Haley is a contributing author of the Arctic Council’s AMAP “Assessment of Potential Effects of Oil and Gas Activities in the Arctic,” including a case study on Nuiqsut.

ISER Education Projects• The Alaskool Web site, developed and maintained by ISER, provides a library of

information on subsistence, traditional life, Native languages, ANCSA, and other aspects of Alaska Native history and culture.

• The Alaska Partnership for Teacher Enhancement (APTE), is a federally funded Title II partnership grant between ISER and other units of UAA, the Anchorage School District, three rural Alaska school districts—Yupiit, Kashunamiut, and Lower Kuskokwim—and other public and private entities. APTE’s work includes professional development efforts aimed at helping teachers better incorporate local knowledge into standards-based curriculum.

• The Alaska Educational Innovations Network, is a new Title II partnership grant between UAA's College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences, the UAA community campuses, eight school districts—the original four from APTE, as well as Lake and Peninsula, Kodiak, Mat-Su and Pribilof Islands School Districts—and GCI. ISER provides evaluation and data analysis for AEIN. Project goals include creating distance delivery mechanisms so more local (and especially Alaska Native) teachers can be trained without leaving their communities.

• “Thirty years later: A Study of the Long-Term Effects of Alaska's Boarding Schools on Alaska Natives and Their Communities” is an ISER study exploring the effects of boarding schools on the Native adults who attended them, as well as the effects on their families and communities. This is the first attempt to systematically document these effects since the boarding school system was dismantled in the 1970s.

Future and Proposed ISER Projects• Resilience and adaptation of Northern communities with large-scale resource development

Sharman Haley, an associate professor of public policy as ISER, has a pending proposal to the Human Social Dynamics program at NSF. Eight Iñupiat and Inuvialuit communities on the Arctic slope of Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories—Barrow, Wainwright, Atqasuk, Nuiqsut, Kaktovik, Aklavik, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk—are on the frontier of expanding oil and gas development. This proposal envisions a three-year, international partnership of communities and researchers to inquire into the socio-cultural effects of oil and gas development, strategies for mitigation and adaptation, and assets for community resilience.

• Modeling differential adaptation to technological change: community capacity for operations and maintenance of water and sanitation facilities in Alaskan villagesDr. Haley has a joint proposal with the Institute of Northern Engineering at UAF, to the Arctic Social Sciences program at NSF. In the last 30 years, over one billion dollars has been invested in high-tech Arctic design water and sanitation infrastructure in remote Alaska communities. The future of that investment is in question, because some of the infrastructure has already required expensive, premature replacement or repair. Why do some villages operate and maintain their utilities effectively, while other, demographically similar villages do not? University students from each region of study will work as case study investigators under the supervision of Dr. Haley to explore why some communities adapt more successfully than others. The final phase of the project includes information sharing in a series of regional workshops.

• Population migration among Arctic communities

Matt Berman, an ISER economist, is about to start an NSF-funded project examining population migration among Arctic communities. He also has a pending NSF proposal, which includes working with UAF researchers, to assess transitions in human-reindeer/caribou systems.

Future and Proposed ISER Projects (Continued)

The Changing Cryosphere and the People of AlaskaFran Ulmer and Matthew Berman of ISER, and Matthew Sturm of the U.S. Army’s Cold Regions

Research and Engineering Laboratory, have submitted a letter of intent for a proposed project under NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA)/Alaska/Arctic program.The Alaska cryosphere is the sea ice, lake ice, river ice, glacier ice, permafrost and snow that make the

Arctic unique. The amount of ice waxes and wanes seasonally, with some forms (for example, snow cover, river, and near-shore sea ice) disappearing entirely, while other forms (permafrost and glaciers) remain all year. Indigenous residents have relied on snow and ice as a platform for mobility – originally powered by dogs and more recently by snowmachines – to pursue hunting and trapping activities through the long winter. Ice conditions have also imposed severe limitations on when, where, and what modes of industrial transportation and development will be viable.

Changing climate conditions are altering both the traditional and the modern forms of transportation in dramatic ways. We need to better understand how to plan, build and maintain transportation systems to adapt to these changing conditions.

For more information, see ISER’s Web site:

www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu