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Accepted Paper:
Victoria Wyllie de Echeverria (University of Oxford) Thomas Thornton (University of Alaska Southeast)
Paper short abstract:
This research looks at how coastal local people perceive and adapt to changes in climate and biodiversity patterns, how these changes are affecting the landscape, resource use, and livelihoods in a local-scale view, and how these local understandings can be used to inform resiliency into the future.
Paper long abstract:
In this research we investigate the magnitude of historical and modern day environmental shifts in the coastal estuarine ecosystem in 11 Indigenous communities on the northern coast of British Columbia and Alaska, and how these communities are adapting to these changes, by examining TEK surrounding climate, biodiversity and resource changes. This coastal region is an extremely dynamic system where the local people have been affected by, and applied adaptive resiliency to, changing weather and biodiversity patterns for thousands of years, and yet this landscape has been poorly represented in the literature. Approximately 85 elders and resource users were interviewed using semi-structured techniques to record knowledge on: weather observations past and present, changes in floral and faunal distribution, range, quality, and quantity characteristics, changes to harvesting and processing techniques, ecosystem services, historical adaptation techniques, and policy and management.
Overall, the findings show that people have noticed many changes over time, but accelerating in the last 15-20 years, not only in weather patterns, but also in the behaviour, distributions and availability of floral and faunal resources. They feel these changes have affected the landscape, biodiversity and their livelihoods on many levels. Our ethnoecological data can assist in evaluating climate indicator and impact species, and show how local perceptions of climate changes are linked to changes in abundance, distribution, and quality of resources. By recognizing these changes and responses, it can be seen how people are currently adapting, and how built-in resiliency can be used to continue to adapt into the future.
Climate Change, Biodiversity and Human Adaptation
Session 1