ABSTRACT OPP-9521459 KRUSE This study addresses policy questions about the ability of arctic communities to sustain themselves in the face of climate changes and development. For the past 25 years, communities in Alaska's North Slope Borough have sustained themselves through a combination of wage employment derived from petroleum revenues, harvests mf caribou, marine mammals, and other resources. Local control has been exercised through regional government and Native-owned corporations. The principal climate changes considered in this study are rising temperatures, increased precipitation and increased frequency of extreme events. Climate changes of these types will affect caribou and other populations important to the local subsistence economy, as well as construction, transportation and regional development. The policy audience includes state and national entities and the North Slope Borough. An interdisciplinary group will focus on a number of goals including: the development of a vegetation model that predicts forage for caribou and a model that responds to climate variables and human harvest; a subsistence hunting/wage employment model as affected by caribou and wage opportunities; an econometric and institutional analysis of petroleum investments as affected by environmental costs and public policies; a comparative analysis of policy vehicles for responding to forces of change; and the development of a synthesis framework for relating policies to future outcomes. The study will not attempt to link the detailed subsystem models in a single grand model. Rather, the subsystem models will be designed to operate independently with the outputs of one subsystem model serving as key inputs to the other subsystem models. Integration of the subsystems will start with a simple meta-model that reflects gross changes and then successively elaborate the model to a level of detail appropriate to address specific policy questions. The ultimate goal is to develop a means by which policy makers can systematically examine relationships between policy choices and possible futures, as well as to provide a vehicle for scientists from different disciplines to combine their data and develop complementary research programs. *** ??
