Among the many serious environmental threats facing Alaska and the Arctic and Subarctic, climate change is at the top. Disruption in transportation, damage to buildings, water, and sanitation infrastructure due to permafrost melting; threats to the subsistence lifestyle of Alaskan natives due to reduced or displaced food resources (land and water) due to decreases in extent of sea ice making hunting more difficult and dangerous; impacts on water treatment facilities due to deteriorating water sources are among the most significant effects of climate change in Alaska.
Many climate change studies have been performed and several are ongoing related to impacts on food, health, and water by several research institutes, native corporations, non-profit organizations, and governmental agencies. However, all these studies focus on regional or state levels rather than individual communities. Most of the time down-scaling the effects of climate change from a large region to single community does not provide a better understating of actual impacts in that community. Therefore as a first step towards better understanding climate change impacts on water, food, and health at the community level, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is conducting climate change impact assessments at the local level for the Northwest Arctic Borough Region in Alaska that includes eleven villages. As part of this study, qualitative climate change assessments of representative villages (located on different systems for e.g. coastal, river, groundwater-wells; and ponds or lakes) was performed. The results obtained from these representative villages were up-scaled to the region to develop adaptive strategies and monitoring plans related to specific issues. Observations and findings from these studies will be presented and climate change impacts in each locality will be compared.
