Overview
The National Science Foundation awarded $20 million to Alaska EPSCoR to investigate climate change effects on culturally and commercially important marine species in the Gulf of Alaska. This is the sixth, multimillion EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-1, or "Track-1" award under Alaska EPSCoR.
The project unites 23 researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Alaska Southeast. They partner with eight Gulf of Alaska communities: Seldovia, Halibut Cove, Homer, Cordova, Valdez, Juneau, Haines and Klukwan.
As climate change warms temperatures, increasing glacial melt flushes large amounts of freshwater, sediment and nutrients into the Gulf of Alaska, altering the conditions of the nearshore coastal environment.
Researchers will study the effects of these changes on coastal species and the well-being of people and economies who rely on them. Project goals stem from conversations with local community members, tribal entities, shellfish and kelp farmers, and government agency representatives that took place over two years with the help of an NSF planning grant. The grant allowed researchers to listen to community concerns and develop relevant questions.
Vision
The vision of IoC is to build resilience in Gulf of Alaska coastal communities through co-developed, use-inspired research on land-to-ocean linkages that influence marine resources using place-based, equitable science.
Mission
The mission is for IoC researchers to work collaboratively with coastal community partners to identify consequences of climate-induced changes on marine resources and to model potential community adaptation strategies. IoC researchers will work in parallel with rural communities, industry farmers, and agency managers to identify and link environmental drivers and the consequences of climate-induced changes to marine wild harvested and farmed resources.
Goals
The goals of IoC are to:
1) Build collaborative research capacity to assess how climate-induced changes affect marine resources on which Gulf of Alaska coastal communities are reliant, and
2) Generate environmental data and web-based tools to inform adaptive community solutions to sustainably harvest and farm marine resources in a changing climate. Research will take place across University of Alaska (UA) campuses in Fairbanks (UAF), Anchorage (UAA) and Juneau (UAS) and align strongly with both UA research goals and the State of Alaska’s Science and Technology Plan.