Resources

In 2012 Bristol Bay Native Association (BBNA) in partnership with Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation (BBAHC) and Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) began evaluating connections between climate change impacts and health. The purpose, to encourage wellness and to adapt to changes in the Bristol Bay region. Of special importance for community wellness are the changes occurring to the natural environment and the effects on food and water security. This is a synthesis of findings from the project.

When resources are spatially and temporally variable, consumers can increase
their foraging success by moving to track ephemeral feeding opportunities
as these shift across the landscape; the best examples derive from herbivore–
plant systems, where grazers migrate to capitalize on the seasonal waves of
vegetation growth. We evaluated whether analogous processes occur in watersheds
supporting spawning sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka), asking
whether seasonal activities ofpredators and scavengers shift spatial distributions

This project provided systematic coastal habitat imagery and mapping for the Alaska Peninsula shoreline following the Alaska ShoreZone Mapping Protocol and made these products web-accessible. The completed mapping product is available on the ShoreZone website in a searchable dataset. Individuals and communities can query coastal habitat information for use in coastal zone planning.

A high spatial resolution storm surge model was developed for the YK Delta area to assess biological impacts of storm surges under current and future climates. Storm surges are expected to be more frequent and more severe in the YK Delta area due to climate change and sea level rise. The biological impacts in the YK Delta due to the changed storm surges could be extreme.

A high spatial resolution storm surge model was developed for the YK Delta area to assess biological impacts of storm surges under current and future climates. Storm surges are expected to be more frequent and more severe in the YK Delta area due to climate change and sea level rise. The biological impacts in the YK Delta due to the changed storm surges could be extreme.

The western coastline of Alaska is highly susceptible to coastal storms, which can cause coastal erosion, flooding, and have other pernicious effects to the environment and commercial efforts. The reduction in ice coverage due to climate change could potentially increase the frequency and degree of coastal flooding and erosion.

This report is structured around the specific objectives in the format of three stand-alone manuscripts that are in the process of submission to peer-reviewed journals. The first manuscript includes objectives 1-2, the second manuscript addresses objective 3, and the final manuscript objective 4. The overarching goal of the proposal was to understand how both recently experienced and projected water temperatures might influence population-specific patterns of embryo incubation, timing of hatching and fry emergence, and survival of sockeye salmon embryos.

This plan establishes a framework for voluntary, network-based water temperature monitoring of salmon habitat in the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska. The goals are to coordinate acquisition and availability of water temperature data that meets salmon management needs of cooperating organizations, meets statewide minimum data collection standards, and is publicly-accessible.

Map showing the area proposed for ShoreZone mapping (in red) with FY13 funds from the Western Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperative funds; the coastline with existing ShoreZone imagery and mapped data in blue; and the coastline with existing ShoreZone imagery that remains to be mapped in green. This imagery was collected in either 2006 (Bristol Bay survey July 19-23, 2006) or 2011 (Southwest Alaska/Alaska Peninsula May 16-21, 2011).

The Western Alaska LCC, the Department of Interior's Alaska Climate Science Center​ and the Bureau of Land Management brought together 150 land and resource managers, field specialists, researchers and local knowledge experts to identify climate change related priority science/information needs for land and resource management in western Alaska. The workshop results help inform development of the LCC's Science Strategy, which will guide the LCC's efforts over the next ten years. The workshop was modeled in part after the 2007 WildREACH Workshop for the arctic region.

This project used existing ShoreZone coastal imagery to map 719 km of shoreline in Bristol Bay, from Cape Constantine to Cape Newenham. This section of coastline is an extremely important herring spawning area and an important component of the Bristol Bay fisheries. Intertidal and nearshore vegetation, on which herring spawn, was catalogued as part of the mapping and, along with shore types, coastal substrate, and coastal biota, added to the state-wide ShoreZone dataset.​

An integrated high resolution tide and storm surge model has been developed
for all of coastal Alaska. The model uses the ADCIRC basin-to-channel
scale unstructured grid circulation code. Tidal forcing from global tidal models
and meteorological forcing from the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis
are used. The model’s tidal solution has been validated at 121 shelf and
nearshore stations. The model’s skill has been investigated for summer, fall
and winter storms. Sea ice has been incorporated through a parameterized

This project established a permafrost monitoring network in this region, providing a baseline of permafrost thermal regimes for assessing future change at a total of 26 automated monitoring stations. Stations have collected year-round temperature data from the active layer and the permafrost starting from the summer of 2011. The strong correspondence between spatial variability in permafrost thermal regime and an existing ecotype map allowed for the development of a map of 'permafrost thermal classes' for the broader study region.

This project used existing ShoreZone coastal imagery to map 719 km of shoreline in Bristol Bay, from Cape Constantine to Cape Newenham. This section of coastline is an extremely important herring spawning area and an important component of the Bristol Bay fisheries. Intertidal and nearshore vegetation, on which herring spawn, was catalogued as part of the mapping and, along with shore types, coastal substrate, and coastal biota, added to the state-wide ShoreZone dataset.​

The tundra biome is the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of the circumpolar north, and its fate in a rapidly changing climate is of high scientific and socioeconomic concern. One of those concerns is that the majority of caribou herds throughout the circumpolar north are declining, perhaps as a result of climate change. The principal objective of this research is to reveal the connections between soil nutrient cycling, forage quality and caribou habitat selection.

Floods, spatially complex water flows, and organism movements all generate important fluxes of aquatic-derived materials into terrestrial habitats, counteracting the gravity-driven downhill transport of matter from terrestrial-to-aquatic ecosystems. The magnitude of these aquatic subsidies is

Climate change is expected to impact the thermal regimes of streams and other
freshwater ecosystems (Schindler 2001, Malmqvist and Rundle 2002, Poff et al. 2002). While
increased air temperatures will have direct effects on water temperature, indirect effects due to
changes in precipitation patterns, groundwater characteristics, and flow regimes (Perkins et al.
2010) may have much larger effects. We explored 1) how variation in hydrological
characteristics of streams mediate their thermal regimes, 2) how geomorphic features of

The goal of the Bristol Bay Regional Water Temperature Monitoring Network is to generate water temperature data which meet the information needs of individual cooperators while simultaneously generating data relevant for assessing changes in stream and lake temperatures at a regional scale. The Network’s short-term (3-5 year) objectives are to:
 increase data collecting capacity in the Bristol Bay region;
 institute the use of minimum data collection standards to produce data useful for the analysis of regional trends;

This is an outreach flyer about the presence of the invasive specie Rogusa Rose in Perryville, Alaska.

This project resulted in an extensive mapping of coastal change along the entire coastline of the Western Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC). The work provides important baseline information on the distribution and magnitude of landscape changes over the past 41 years.

The environment is rapidly changing and global warming brings impacts to all forms of life. This report is about the effects of a changing climate on the human environment and changes to communities and peoples’ lives. The best measures of change are the observations of people who live and work here, travel the trails, watch the weather, and harvest food from the land and sea. By listening, we learn the nature of the changes that are occurring, and gain insight into the causes and specific implications to people and the adaptations that are being developed and used every day.

How local geomorphic and hydrologic features mediate the sensitivity of stream thermal regimes to variation in climatic conditions remains a critical uncertainty in understanding aquatic ecosystem responses to climate change. We used stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen to estimate contributions of snow and rainfall to 80 boreal streams and show that differences in snow contribution are controlled by watershed topography.

Understanding the causes of relative sea level rise requires knowledge of changes to both land (uplift and subsidence) and sea level. However, measurements of coastal uplift or subsidence are almost completely lacking in western Alaska. This project provided precise measurements of prioritized benchmarks across the Western Alaska geography, improving the network of published tidal benchmark elevations, allowing for tidal datum conversion in more places, and providing a necessary component for improved inundation studies in coastal communities and low-lying areas.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska is a globally important region for numerous avian species including millions of migrating and nesting waterbirds. Climate change effects such as sea level rise and increased storm frequency and intensity have the potential to impact waterbird populations and breeding habitat. In order to determine the potential impacts of these climate-mediated changes, we investigated both short-term and long-term impacts of storm surges to geese and eider species that commonly breed on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.