Inuit and Inupiat hunters in the North American Arctic rely on sea ice for travel and hunting for much of the year. Their use of the ice requires detailed knowledge of ice conditions for both safety and success in hunting, their main livelihood. The sea-ice environment in the Arctic is changing, however. Studies of sea-ice characteristics from scientific and indigenous knowledge perspectives have found major changes in the extent and thickness of the Arctic ice pack as well as local and regional changes in certain characteristics like the thickness, stability, and dates of formation of the shorefast ice used by hunters. As a result, Inuit and Inupiat communities are making changes to their day-to-day and long-term livelihood strategies and are dealing with traditional knowledge and skills that are, at times, no longer applicable. At the same time, scientists struggle to understand the interactions of the forces influencing sea-ice changes and variations of change at multiple scales. How can these two groups inform each other and benefit from collaboration on this topic of mutual concern? This project will investigate the dynamics of the coupled systems of Inuit and Inupiat hunters and shorefast or drifting sea ice in the context of environmental change. A multidisciplinary team of investigators will collaborate with the communities of Barrow, Alaska, and Clyde River, Nunavut, to carry out this investigation. The main objectives of the project are (1) to document Inuit and Inupiat knowledge and use of sea ice along with those factors that limit or enable this use, (2) to document Inuit and Inupiat observations and perspectives on sea-ice changes and correlate these with scientific observations, (3) to examine the differences and similarities in sea-ice changes and community interactions with them in the Baffin Bay and Chukchi Sea locales, and (4) to document how Inuit and Inupiat cope with changes in sea ice in their respective regions as well as how different approaches in one region may inform the other regarding adaptation strategies.
Anticipated intellectual contributions of this project include illumination of frameworks for integrating scientific and indigenous knowledge, particularly the integration of traditional and scientific views of ice conditions and the comparison of large-scale trends with local changes in sea ice. Anticipated broader impacts of this project include training and education of indigenous Arctic communities, scientists and graduate students in practical and theoretical studies of environmental changes and their consequences. The project also is expected to contribute important information to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) program of the Arctic Council and to the 2005 report on Climate Impact Assessments of Working Group 3 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This project is supported by an award resulting from the FY 2003 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.
