A recent national news program posed the question, "Will the residents of Kivalina, Alaska be the first climate change refugees in the U.S.?" The Inupiat Eskimo village on the west coast of Alaska is one of many communities facing challenges due to sea level rise and rapidly warming temperatures in the Arctic. Coping with these challenges can be difficult for remote villages that may not understand the potential threats they face. Three Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) recently initiated a project to help the residents of Kivalina, and hundreds of other coastal communities in western Alaska, adapt and become more resilient to climate change.

The 400 residents of Kivalina depend on marine mammals for subsistence. They are already encountering difficulty obtaining seals, walrus and whales due to changes in the thickness and timing of freeze-up and thawing of the ice pack. Fall storms that used to blow harmlessly across a frozen sea now bring pounding waves and storm surges that threaten to flood the village.  Scientists predict that Kivalina could fall below sea level as soon as 2025. Other coastal villages are also facing similar challenges.

To work with communities such as Kivalina, the Alaskan LCCs will be developing materials and workshops to communicate these threats with local villages. Aaron Poe, Science Coordinator for the Aleutian and Bering Sea Islands (ABSI) LCC, described the project as a way to help translate the volumes of science gathered by ABSI, the Western Alaska (WA) LCC, and the Arctic LCC into tools local villages and community or regional planners can use to make the tough decisions they face. In some cases, the translation may need to be literal ? from English scientific jargon to Inupiat, Yupik or Aleut dialects.

Recognizing the importance of involving village residents in the process, the LCCs, working with the Wildlife Management Institute, have contracted an Alaskan firm with extensive experience engaging rural residents in complex projects. Chris Beck, with Agnew::Beck Consulting of Anchorage said his firm has helped several other villages plan for the impacts of climate change in western Alaska. One of the obstacles local residents have to overcome, though, is figuring out what information is most relevant to the issues they face, and how they can use that to support their decision-making. Beck said, "The LCCs can't just unload a ?dump truck' full of data and expect people in the villages or regional planning offices to use it. We need to work together to figure out which ?shovel-fulls' of information are going to be most valuable and how to communicate that information."

The project will begin this month, using interviews with local residents to identify the issues they are facing due to climate change and assessing their awareness of information compiled by the LCCs. Based on results of these discussions, LCC staff and Agnew::Beck will set priorities and develop tools and materials designed to fill gaps in villagers' access to and understanding of the science they need. Draft tools and materials will be shared with village representatives at four or more sessions held between October and February. Feedback from those sessions will inform a regional workshop scheduled for late March or early April, 2016 in Nome, Alaska to give local residents and planners "hands on" training in use of the tools.

WA LCC Coordinator Karen Murphy spearheaded the effort to launch the project. She said, "The LCCs are intended to generate the science people need to address the impacts of climate change. But if people don't know the data exist, or if they can't use it, the LCCs can't fulfill their mission." This project will ensure that the science generated by the LCCs and others is used to inform the decisions of people in western Alaska who are facing incredibly difficult choices. (cs)