Community Well-being
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. The reliability of traditional marine harvest species is vital for feeding households and perpetuating continuity of culture.
To assist Gulf of Alaska communities and Tribes as they adapt to shifts in the environment, Interface of Change researchers Davin Holen and Micah Hahn 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.
Hypotheses:
| 1.) If coastal residents have information on wild and cultivated marine resources, they will be able to continue harvesting culturally important species and increasingly adopt mariculture to diversify their maritime economies. |
| 2.) Residents of coastal communities are observing changes in the ecosystem and adapting harvest strategies due to changes in the abundance of traditional wild foods. |
Guided by these hypotheses, the Community Well-being team are engaging with community members and gathering data in Homer, Seldovia, Cordova, Haines, and Klukwan.