Our most important conclusion to date is that recent economic and climatic changes in interior Alaska have interacted to reduce the well-being of rural residents and reduce the resilience of the region to projected future changes. Projected changes, however, provide a wide range of options for adaptation, and many rural communities have the adaptive capacity to adjust to these changes and enhance opportunities for sustainability and self-reliance.
The goal of this assessment is to document the changing role of fire, particularly as affected by human activities, on the Boreal System and its human residents and to explore alternative scenarios of future changes that might enhance or further reduce human well-being. Our study design is spatially hierarchical: We study Interior Alaska and the western Yukon as a region, and within this region we study traditional communities and their surrounding traditional use areas. Our study also has a temporal hierarchy of long-term trends (1800-2100), within which we study most intensively the period 1950-2050, where we have greatest confidence in past records and future projections. We focus primarily on two bundles of ecosystem services that are strongly affected by changes in climate and fire regime and on a set of management policies that alter the relationships among fire, ecosystem services, and human well-being.
Fire and climate warming alter climate regulation at large spatial scales by changing vegetation composition, energy exchange with the atmosphere, and carbon balance. We study how these ecological changes either amplify or buffer the rate of climatic warming. These climate feedbacks also influence the consequences of state/territory and national policies of carbon sequestration and fire suppression. Human effects on, and responses to, fire at this scale are currently small. Ecosystem modeling (TEM) and policy analysis are the primary tools used to study these large-scale processes.
Fire, climatic warming, and fire management modify provisioning and cultural services such as subsistence foods (e.g., game, berries, firewood,), economic opportunities and risks (e.g., wages, property risk), and cultural ties to the land (as reflected in altered subsistence activities, rural-urban migration, and forest harvest). We document changes in subsistence foods based on ecological observations and interviews with subsistence users. We then use a landscape model of climate-fire-vegetation interactions (ALFRESCO) to explore how future changes in climate and fire policy might alter fire regime and ecosystem services. The landscape pattern of these changes determines the consequences for use by local communities. We use records of fires, employment, and community income to assess the positive and negative economic effects of fire on communities. We assess conditions and trends through stand-age reconstructions, maps of fires since 1950, and interviews with elders. We explore scenarios through landscape modeling.
Policy and management influence the ways in which climate and fire affect ecosystem services through policy effects on fire pattern and extent and on the wages available to support subsistence. Fire policies respond to both national and local pressures for change. Game-management policies influence both the availability and harvest of ecosystem goods by local communities.
Project Goals
The goal of this assessment is to document the changing role of fire, particularly as affected by human activities, on the Boreal System and its human residents and to explore alternative scenarios of future changes that might enhance or further reduce human well-being. More explicitly, the goals are to document historical patterns and project future trends in:
1. wildfire extent and severity
2. ecosystem patterns, particularly the abundance, location, and accessibility of subsistence resources
3. feedbacks from ecological changes to climate
4. subsistence opportunities for rural communities
5. capacity of rural indigenous communities to envision and shape their future (self-reliance)
Project Outcomes
Project findings and outcomes
Climate change: Alaska is warming twice as fast as the global average, with little change in precipitation (Chapin et al. 2006). The resulting drying of the boreal forest has increased the annual area burned, primarily through increased frequency of dry years and larger wildfires (Kasischke and Turretsky 2006).
Fire management: Because of limited funding and agency guidelines, Alaskan fire managers focus suppression efforts near human population centers or other areas of management concern. Fire managers are faced with a dilemma because they must decide in early spring (before the fire season begins) the number of airplanes to lease and fire crews to hire.
Wildfire projections: Spatially explicit models of climate and wildfire suggest that, by 2050, a “typical” fire year in Interior Alaska will be similar to the most extreme fire years in the historical record (Rupp et al. 2002; http://www.snap.uaf.edu/). These models were developed through extensive discussion and input from climatologists, ecologists, and fire managers (Duffy et al. 2005).
Science-Policy Interactions: Modeling results are communicated to fire managers and the public through participation by our team members in annual wildfire-strategic-planning workshops, agency meetings with the public, agency planning of prescribed burns, and provision of site-specific 2-km-resolution climate and fire-risk projections for any Alaskan community or region requested by fire managers or the public (http://www.snap.uaf.edu/). For example, team members participate in an interagency Alaska Fire Science Consortium (http://akfireconsortium.uaf.edu), which communicates results of fire science research to fire managers and other members of the fire suppression and planning community through consortium outreach and partnership activities such as workshops, fact sheets, newsletters, webinars and field trips.
Wildfire impacts on rural communities: Although indigenous peoples have co-evolved with fire in Interior Alaska for 6,000 years, recent social changes have radically altered this relationship. Athabascan people traditionally moved seasonally from summer fish camps to areas that were appropriate for harvesting other subsistence resources in autumn, winter, and spring. If wildfires made one area unsuitable, people adjusted their seasonal round to meet subsistence needs. In the modern era of permanent communities with schools, churches, stores, health services, and airports, wildfire has a radically different effect on communities because people must face the consequences of nearby fires for decades.
Science Communication: Our team members collaborate with village tribal councils to explore ecosystem management strategies such as the sustainable harvest of flammable black spruce stands near communities to provide a local fuel source, new jobs, and secondary successional habitat that favors moose (Chapin et al. 2008, Kofinas et al. 2010). These discussions were initiated by tribal councils that co-organized community workshops in which local residents provided local and traditional knowledge that informs wildfire ecology and management. Community surveys showed overwhelmingly strong support for building firebreaks around communities and using the wood to generate electricity. Additionally, people felt they would use trails to the firebreaks to get firewood and that firebreaks would have a neutral to positive effect on subsistence.
Wildfire protection planning: Team members have also participated in federally mandated Community Wildfire Protection Planning by conducting interviews and surveys of local residents and resource managers. Surveys and interviews demonstrated that local residents trusted managers to plan wildfire protection of communities but felt disenfranchised in regional wildfire planning for surrounding lands because their knowledge and concerns about future subsistence opportunities and places of cultural value were overlooked (Ray 2010). Results of this survey were provided to community residents and to fire managers and to wildlife refuge managers. Results were incorporated into the final Community Wildfire Protection Plan. By working closely with communities in an agency-mandated wildfire planning process, team members identified and helped bridge a communication gap that had long been a source of tension and miscommunication.
Links
Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research Programhttp://www.lter.uaf.edu/
Documents
Project summary
Location: Alaska, USA
System Type: Forest/woodland
Contact: Terry Chapin
Collaborators: Stuart Chapin, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Teresa Hollingsworth, US Forest Service; Henry Huntington, private consultant; Orville Huntington, Alaska Native Science Commission; Jill Johnstone, University of Saskatchewan, Canada; Amy Lovecraft, Universi
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Project Dates: 2003-present
Keywords: Wildfire; social-ecological resilience; Alaska; boreal forest; Indigenous communities; subsistence; sustainability
