Community Well-being

Are changes to access, harvest, cultivation, and use of marine resources influencing the health and social, cultural, and economic well-being in rural coastal communities, and how is access and use affected by environmental change?

Coastal Indigenous peoples in the Gulf of Alaska have always been and continue to be orientated towards the marine environment to meet their nutritional needs through complex relationships with the fish, shellfish, marine mammal, seaweeds, and other resources they depend on for their subsistence way of life. Climate change threatens the reliability of traditional marine harvest species, which are vital for feeding households and perpetuating continuity of culture.

To assist Gulf of Alaska communities and Tribes as they develop climate adaptation solutions, Interface of Change researchers Davin Holen and Micah Hahn will work with communities to determine if changes to access, harvest, cultivation, and use of marine resources are influencing the health and social, cultural, and economic well-being in rural coastal communities, and how is access and use affected by environmental change.

For this, two hypotheses will be tested, each of which have multiple objectives. The first hypothesis documents local harvest pattern changes that identifies if coastal residents have local and traditional knowledge of wild and cultivated marine resources to enable them to successfully shift their spatial distribution or otherwise adapt to changing environmental conditions. This will enable residents to maintain their harvest of culturally important species as well as increasingly adopt mariculture to diversify their maritime economies.

The second hypothesis will then test if residents of coastal communities are observing changes in the ecosystem and adapting harvest strategies due to the presence, absence, and abundance of traditional wild foods.