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In this paper we present the results from a systematic literature review of subsistence research that was conducted in northern Canada between 1950 and 2019. Our analysis identified trends in subsistence research, including the breadth of research topics, influential scholars and scholarship, and the emergence of research networks. Our results identified 245 publications authored by a multidisciplinary network of 365 scholars. Research conducted through ArcticNet and the International Polar Year is responsible for 75% (n = 183 of 245) of all subsistence-related publications during this period. Subsistence publications cover a wide range of topics, including climate change, nutrition, and wildlife management, but Indigenous food culture and the roles of women in subsistence have received comparatively less scholarly attention. Given the profound changes occurring in northern Canada, whether a result of anthropogenic or non-anthropogenic disturbances, greater attention to the cultural and gendered dimensions of subsistence will be particularly valuable to northern scholarship and the public policies it can inform. This attention will be increasingly necessary in a time when critical thinking about the future of subsistence in northern Canada is of critical need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an urgent need to understand the contextual factors that influence water vulnerability of households in the Arctic. To evaluate the existing knowledge of Arctic household water vulnerability, this paper presents the results of a narrative review with a systematic search. The review identified 112 documents, including peer-reviewed articles, reviews, book chapters, proceedings papers, and meeting abstracts. The documents were analyzed for the main factors affecting water vulnerability in Arctic households, which fell into two categories: biophysical factors and anthropogenic factors. Within the biophysical category, the majority of documents noted climate change impacts on freshwater supplies and water systems, followed by attention to extreme weather and the seasonality of water supplies. Within the anthropogenic category, the vast majority highlighted infrastructure as the primary issue affecting water access, followed by economic, governance, socio-cultural, and demographic factors. Through these diverse influencing factors, this review situates the discussion of household water vulnerability in the Arctic in a more nuanced light. The categories illuminate patterns between factors, which can worsen, assuage, or mitigate water vulnerability. The complex relationships between these factors influence the degree and nature of water vulnerability in Arctic households. In order to successfully address household water vulnerability in the Arctic, these factors and their dynamic relationships must be considered in freshwater policy and management frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the articles which will appear in the journal, "Arctic." "Allocating Harvests Among Polar Bear Stocks in the Beaufort Sea," by S. C. Amstrup, G. M. Durner, I. Stirling and T. L. McDonald; "Dissipation of Bromide and Metribuzin Affected by Tillage and Crop Residue Management in Subarctic Alaska," by B. S. Sharratt and C. W. Knight; "Potential Alteration by Climate Change of the Forest-Fire Regime in the Boreal Forest of Central Yukon Territory," by V. M. McCoy and C. R. Burn.

This paper presents the results of a number of aircraft- and boat-based surveys for seabird breeding colonies in East and North Greenland carried out in the period 2003 to 2018 and gives the first comprehensive overview of the distribution and size of the seabird breeding colonies in this remote and mainly uninhabited region. Seventeen seabird species breed in approximately 800 sites distributed very unevenly along the coasts, with high concentrations at the polynyas and long stretches with very few breeding seabirds. Climate changes are in full progress in East and North Greenland, especially affecting the sea ice regime, and seabirds are expected to respond to these changes in different ways. For example, since the 1980s, Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima) have extended their breeding range more than two latitudinal degrees towards the north, now reaching the northernmost land on Earth. Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus fuscus) and Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) have immigrated, and Sabine's Gulls (Xema sabini) have increased and extended their range. Besides presenting survey results, this report may also serve as a baseline for future studies of the abundance of breeding seabirds in East and North Greenland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between sea ice conditions and cruise tourism activities in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. It analyzes how cruise tourism planning and organization depend on sea ice conditions and to what extent Arctic climate change influences tourism. A mixed-method approach, including sea ice analysis and interviews with 13 cruise tourism stakeholders, was applied to grasp the complexity of Svalbard's cruise tourism. The outcomes show that cruise traffic depends on the sea ice cover, but only to some extent. Other factors, such as a location's attractiveness or sailing regulations also influence cruise itineraries around Svalbard. Sea ice conditions are in general considered favorable for cruising around Svalbard, and sea ice is a not a decisive factor in cruise planning and organization. The sea ice cover around Svalbard is decreasing; thus, high annual and inter-annual unpredictability of sea ice poses challenges for cruise operations around Svalbard. Flexibility in itineraries, plus good cooperation and management help the cruise industry adjust to any challenges arising from uncertain sea ice conditions. However, issues of overcrowding and decreased attractiveness due to disappearing ice are more and more visible and may challenge the development of cruise tourism around Svalbard in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial development and environmental change, and the health impacts of the nutrition transition among Indigenous peoples. Building on these foundations, food security research in the North has followed a path similar to that taken in the global food security literature, beginning with nutritional adequacy and security of food supplies and then downscaling to a focus on issues at the livelihood and household level. Our meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed literature reveals many reasons why people are food-insecure: challenges such as remoteness, climate change, and the high costs of food and fuel all play important roles. However, the primary drivers of food insecurity that we identify in this review relate to governance and policy challenges that have been recognized and critiqued for decades. Recommendations for future research include an improved focus on participatory research and food security interventions that acknowledge and focus on supporting the rights of local peoples to pursue food security on their own terms. This paper is relevant in the context of climatic and environmental change because it captures the role of shifting political ecologies as increased geopolitical interests in the North appear to be obscuring the rights and needs of local peoples to access and control their own land and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of Inuit traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in adaptation to climate change in the Canadian Arctic. It focuses on Inuit relationships with the Arctic environment, including hunting knowledge and land skills, and examines their roles in adaptation to biophysical changes that affect subsistence hunting. In several instances, TEK underpins competency in subsistence and adaptations to changing conditions, which includes flexibility with regard to seasonal cycles of hunting and resource use, hazard avoidance through detailed knowledge of the environment and understanding of ecosystem processes, and emergency preparedness, e.g., knowing what supplies to take when traveling and how to respond in emergency situations. Despite the documented importance of TEK in adaptation and in maintaining a level of competency in subsistence, the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change are not well defined in the scholarly literature. This paper aims to conceptualize the relationships between TEK and adaptation to climate change by drawing on case study research with Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. TEK is considered an element of adaptive capacity (or resilience) that is expressed as adaptation if TEK is drawn upon to adapt to changing conditions. This capacity depends on the development, accumulation, and transmission of TEK within and among generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a particular experience of cultural bridging between the Heritage Department of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in (TH) First Nation and academics and government funders taking part in the 2007 - 09 International Polar Year. The TH Heritage Department acted as lead researcher on the project entitled Documenting Traditional Knowledge in Relation to Climate Change. TH Heritage staff spearheaded and largely carried out the project work. Academic researchers, acting as contractors, collaborated in some project activities and produced academic papers summarizing the work. This collaboration provided a rare opportunity for the TH Heritage Department to share the research it has conducted for more than a decade in the broader, institutional context of university and government research. Its success highlights the fact that relationships between these partners are evolving and becoming more equitable: First Nations research is receiving more support, and the corpus of mainstream knowledge is changing, allowing different bodies of work to "count" as knowledge. This paper analyzes some of the differences between TH Heritage approaches to its mandate for gathering and sharing Traditional Knowledge (TK) and the understandings and uses of TK by other governments and by university-based academics. On the basis of project results and recent policy developments in northern governance and research, it makes practical recommendations for reconciling knowledge approaches and building mutually supportive research relationships between First Nations, academics, and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interacting forces of climate change and increased human activity in the Arctic are driving rapid changes in ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity. One such change is the northern range expansion of tree species. We present the first account of the boreal tree species trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides, Salicaceae) growing beyond the latitudinal treeline in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range, Alaska. The four trembling aspen stands described in this paper are located on abandoned gravel roads or pads created for construction purposes. We hypothesize that gravel pads create islands of substrate suitable for tree growth within the Arctic by providing greater rooting depth, well-drained microsites, an extended growing season, and acid-buffering capacity. Further, traffic along the south-to-north oriented Dalton Highway from the boreal forest in Interior Alaska to the Arctic may aid seed dispersal across the topographic barrier of the Brooks Range. Therefore, increased development in the Arctic will likely accelerate the establishment of trees as climate becomes more favorable for tree growth. Tree colonization associated with infrastructure development would contrast sharply with prior conceptual models of gradual treeline advance following disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Arctic and Subarctic, the contribution of Indigenous knowledge to understanding environmental change has been established over the last several decades. This paper explores the role of Indigenous knowledge of water in understanding hydrologic change within complex social-ecological systems. Observations of hydrology in the Yukon River Basin, contributed by 20 community experts from Ruby Village, Alaska, in semi-structured interviews, are compared with findings from scientific literature to illustrate the commonalities and differences. Research findings reveal the contribution of Indigenous knowledge to understandings of hydrologic change in the Yukon River and its tributaries, which includes insights regarding alterations in sediment and river ice regimes. Recommendations for future research that incorporates Indigenous knowledge of water to gain insight into hydrologic changes in the watershed include combining multiple case studies that are distributed geographically. Our findings suggest 1) that using participatory research approaches to research will help ensure that it benefits the communities whose livelihoods are affected by hydrologic changes, and 2) that a multidisciplinary approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods from the social and biophysical sciences would be most effective to help us understand and respond to hydrologic changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major achievement in research supported by the Kluane Lake Research Station was the recovery, in 2001 - 02, of a suite of cores from the icefields of the central St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, by teams of researchers from Canada, the United States, and Japan. This project led to the development of parallel, long (103-104 year) ice-core records of climate and atmospheric change over an altitudinal range of more than 2 km, from the Eclipse Icefield (3017 m) to the ice-covered plateau of Mt. Logan (5340 m). These efforts built on earlier work recovering single ice cores in this region. Comparison of these records has allowed for variations in climate and atmospheric composition to be linked with changes in the vertical structure and dynamics of the North Pacific atmosphere, providing a unique perspective on these changes over the Holocene. Owing to their privileged location, cores from the St. Elias Icefields also contain a remarkably detailed record of aerosols from various sources around or across the North Pacific. In this paper we review major scientific findings from the study of St. Elias Mountain ice cores, focusing on five main themes: (1) The record of stable water isotopes (δ18O, δD), which has unique characteristics that differ from those of Greenland, other Arctic ice cores, and even among sites in the St. Elias; (2) the snow accumulation history; (3) the record of pollen, biomass burning aerosol, and desert dust deposition; (4) the record of long-range air pollutant deposition (sulphate and lead); and (5) the record of paleo-volcanism. Our discussion draws on studies published since 2000, but based on older ice cores from the St. Elias Mountains obtained in 1980 and 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal regions of Alaska are regularly affected by intense storms of ocean origin, the frequency and intensity of which are expected to increase as a result of global climate change. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (YKD), situated in western Alaska on the eastern edge of the Bering Sea, is one of the largest deltaic systems in North America. Its low relief makes it especially susceptible to storm-driven flood tides and increases in sea level. Little information exists on the extent of flooding caused by storm surges in western Alaska and its effects on salinization, shoreline erosion, permafrost thaw, vegetation, wildlife, and the subsistence-based economy. In this paper, we summarize storm flooding events in the Bering Sea region of western Alaska during 1913 - 2011 and map both the extent of inland flooding caused by autumn storms on the central YKD, using Radarsat-1 and MODIS satellite imagery, and the drift lines, using high-resolution IKONOS satellite imagery and field surveys. The largest storm surges occurred in autumn and were associated with high tides and strong (> 65 km hr-1) southwest winds. Maximum inland extent of flooding from storm surges was 30.3 km in 2005, 27.4 km in 2006, and 32.3 km in 2011, with total flood area covering 47.1%, 32.5%, and 39.4% of the 6730 km2 study area, respectively. Peak stages for the 2005 and 2011 storms were 3.1 m and 3.3 m above mean sea level (amsl), respectively-almost as high as the 3.5 m amsl elevation estimated for the largest storm observed (in November 1974). Several historically abandoned village sites lie within the area of inundation of the largest flood events. With projected sea level rise, large storms are expected to become more frequent and cover larger areas, with deleterious effects on freshwater ponds, non-saline habitats, permafrost, and landscapes used by nesting birds and local people [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on vulnerability approaches from the climate change literature, this paper explores the vulnerability of residents of the community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, to changes in freshwater. Our approach emphasizes local preferences and values. We analyze the results from 89 household interviews (88% response) and targeted interviews in Rigolet to consider the human experience of climate variability and change. Residents report that changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of freshwater are currently challenging their ability to access preferred drinking water and food sources and are adding to the financial barriers that restrict their time spent on the land. The results of our study suggest that Rigolet residents are successfully adapting to existing freshwater changes in their watershed, though these adaptations have not come without sacrifice. The adaptive capacity of Rigolet residents has been supported by resource flexibility and experience-based knowledge of freshwater variability within their watershed, among other factors. Findings suggest that the exposure of sub-Arctic and Arctic communities to freshwater changes and their capacity to adapt are largely shaped by the lifeways of residents and the manner and degree to which they are dependent on local freshwater systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major achievement in research supported by the Kluane Lake Research Station was the recovery, in 2001 - 02, of a suite of cores from the icefields of the central St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, by teams of researchers from Canada, the United States, and Japan. This project led to the development of parallel, long (10³ - 104 year) ice-core r ecords of climate and atmospheric change over an altitudinal range of more than 2 km, from the Eclipse Icefield (3017 m) to the ice-covered plateau of Mt. Logan (5340 m). These efforts built on earlier work recovering single ice cores in this region. Comparison of these records has allowed for variations in climate and atmospheric composition to be linked with changes in the vertical structure and dynamics of the North Pacific atmosphere, providing a unique perspective on these changes over the Holocene. Owing to their privileged location, cores from the St. Elias Icefields also contain a remarkably detailed record of aerosols from various sources around or across the North Pacific. In this paper we review major scientific findings from the study of St. Elias Mountain ice cores, focusing on five main themes: (1) The record of stable water isotopes (δ18O, δD), which has unique characteristics that differ from those of Greenland, other Arctic ice cores, and even among sites in the St. Elias; (2) the snow accumulation history; (3) the record of pollen, biomass burning aerosol, and desert dust deposition; (4) the record of long-range air pollutant deposition (sulphate and lead); and (5) the record of paleo-volcanism. Our discussion draws on studies published since 2000, but based on older ice cores from the St. Elias Mountains obtained in 1980 and 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes findings from "Knowledge Exchanges," which engaged communities of Viliui Sakha, native horse and cattle agropastoralists of northeastern Siberia, Russia, with regional scientific specialists, a cultural anthropologist, and a permafrost scientist. Our process of knowledge exchange involved first gathering ethnographic data from affected communities, through focus groups, interviews, and surveys, and analyzing how people perceived, understood, and responded to local change. Next we documented the community results and compared them with regional climate change data. Lastly, we discussed these results during community knowledge exchange events, facilitating an increased understanding across knowledge systems and stakeholder groups. The knowledge exchange method documented in this article provides an adaptable model for integrating local and scientific knowledge systems that allows participants to reach understanding more quickly at global and local levels of how climate change is affecting places and peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fort Conger, located in Quttinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island, is a historic landmark of national and international significance. The site is associated with many important Arctic expeditions, including the ill-fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of the First International Polar Year and Robert Peary's attempts to claim the North Pole. Although situated in one of the most remote locations on earth, Fort Conger is currently at risk because of the effects of climate change, weather, wildlife, and human activity. In this paper, we show how 3D laser scanning was used to record cultural features rapidly and accurately despite the harsh conditions present at the site. We discuss how the future impacts of natural processes and human activities can be managed using 3D scanning data as a baseline, how conservation and restoration work can be planned from the resulting models, and how 3D models created from laser scanning data can be used to excite public interest in cultural stewardship and Arctic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the social networks of country food sharing in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada, in light of our current understanding of the relationship between climate change and Arctic peoples. Most recent work on the impacts of climate change on Arctic peoples has tended to focus on conceptual frameworks appropriate for this field of inquiry or to document perceived threats of climate change. This research incorporates a social network approach to document the association between different economic strategies (full-time worker, part-time worker, hunter) and categories of kin. It demonstrates that the sharing patterns of hunters favor the cultivation of ties with distant and collateral kin, while those of wage earners favor ties with parents and siblings. These different affiliations point to different vulnerabilities to change. For example, hunters pursue a strategy that provides the flexibility and connections necessary for adapting to changing environmental circumstances but increases their vulnerability to economic and political changes that restrict their ability to generate cash. Wage workers, despite a steady income, are more vulnerable to environmental change as it affects traveling conditions, potential hazards, and hunting success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares two case studies in Alaska, one on commercial fishers of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region and the other on moose hunters of Interior Alaska, to identify how governance arrangements and management strategies enhance or limit people's ability to respond effectively to changing climatic and environmental conditions. The two groups face similar challenges regarding the impacts of a changing climate on wild fish and game, but they tell very different stories regarding how and under what conditions these impacts challenge their harvest activities. In both regions, people describe dramatic changes in weather, land, and seascape conditions, and distributions of fish and game. A key finding is that the "command-and-control" model of governance in the Alaska Interior, as implemented through state and federal management tools such as registration hunts and short open seasons, limits effective local responses to environmental conditions, while the more decentralized model of governance created by the Limited Access Privilege systems of the Bering Sea allows fishers great flexibility to respond. We discuss ways to implement aspects of a decentralized decision-making model in the Interior that would benefit hunters by increasing their adaptability and success, while also improving conservation outcomes. Our findings also demonstrate the usefulness of the diagnostic framework employed here for facilitating comparative crossregional analyses of natural resource use and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term satellite remote sensing data, when properly calibrated and validated against ground monitoring, could provide valuable data sets for assessing climate change impacts on ecosystems, wildlife, and other important aspects of life in the Arctic. Percent plant cover is ideal for seasonal and long-term ground monitoring because it can be observed non-destructively and is closely related to other key ecosystem variables, such as biomass and leaf area index (LAI). Accurately measuring percent plant cover in the Arctic, however, has been a challenge. Advances in digital photography and imageprocessing techniques have provided the potential to measure vegetation cover accurately. In this paper we report an adapted method for quantifying percent plant cover based on plot digital photograph classification (PDPC). In this digital image analysis, the red, green, and blue image channels and the intensity, hue, and saturation image channels were used together to ensure more accurate cover measurement and labeling of plant species. We evaluated the accuracy of the PDPC method and two other techniques, visual estimate and digital grid overlay, by testing against artificial plots with known percent cover, by comparing with destructively measured LAI, and by comparing results of the three methods. Our evaluation indicates that the PDPC method is the most accurate. In addition, PDPC has the advantages of being objective, quick in the field, and suitable for measuring percent plant cover in the Arctic at the level of functional types or species groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Devon Island ice cap has been the subject of scientific study for almost half a century, beginning with the first mass balance measurements in 1961. Research on the ice cap was the first to investigate (1) the role of meltwater in seasonal ice-velocity variations on a polythermal Arctic ice cap, (2) the use of air temperature rather than net radiation as a proxy for the energy driving surface melt, and (3) the influence of the changing frequency of specific synoptic weather configurations on glacier melt and mass balance. Other research has included investigations of ice cap geometry, flow dynamics, and mass balance; ice core analyses for records of past climate and contaminant deposition; and studies of changes in ice cap area and volume and their relationship to surface mass balance and ice dynamics. Current research includes ground studies connected to efforts to calibrate and validate the radar altimeter that will be carried by the European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat2 satellite, and a major collaborative Canadian International Polar Year (IPY) project focused on the Belcher Glacier, on the northeast side of the ice cap, that examines hydrodynamics of large tidewater glaciers. This paper summarizes our current knowledge of the Devon Island ice cap and identifies some of the outstanding questions that continue to limit our understanding of climate-ice cap interactions in Arctic regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In more than 30 years of studies on marine birds in Arctic Canada, we have observed numerous instances of mortality of adults, eggs, and chicks that seem unusual when compared to known sources of mortality for seabirds breeding in temperate or tropical regions. The extreme cold weather and ice conditions of the Arctic might intuitively be expected to be a significant factor in mortality for these Arctic birds. While weather conditions led directly to seabird mortality, other factors, perhaps facilitated by typical Arctic climate features, caused more deaths. In this paper, we summarize mortality incidents that we have witnessed for nine species of Arctic marine birds, as a baseline against which future observations can be made. We also speculate on mechanisms by which climate change could increase mortality of breeding Arctic seabirds in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent northern vegetation changes caused by climate warming have been well documented, using experimental plot warming to examine vegetation-specific changes and satellite image data to examine overall trends. Previous remote sensing efforts have employed the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from AVHRR, whose 1 km to 8 km pixel size is too large for examination of broad scale vegetation-specific responses because of mixing within the pixel footprint. In this paper, we reconcile differences between field- and remote sensing-based approaches by using both medium-resolution (30 m) and coarse-resolution (1 km) data to study 20 years of vegetation-specific responses to northern climate warming (1986 to 2006). Trends are compared among vegetation communities from two separate Landsat classifications in Canada's eastern and western forest-tundra transition zone, as well as a 1 km AVHRR database recently developed over Canada. A comparison of absolute trends among mapped vegetation communities revealed lichen-dominated communities consistently exhibiting lower trends than those dominated by vascular plants, with both exhibiting increasing NDVI. Our results and those obtained from experimental warming suggest that the magnitude difference in NDVI increase between lichen and vascular vegetation is related to increasing vigor and biomass of vascular vegetation, in contrast to physiological impairment of lichen due to the short-term secondary effect of temperature on moisture. In the longer term, succession from lichen to vascular is likely responsible for the small observed NDVI increase over lichen-dominated regions. The fact that both Landsat and AVHRR exhibited similar relative vegetation-specific trends in NDVI suggests that this phenomenon may be widespread in the North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late Pleistocene Beringia had herb-dominated vegetation with abundant grasses (Poaceae), and it was inhabited by an impressive assemblage of large grazing mammals. This paper reconstructs the list of most probable late Pleistocene Beringian lowland grass species from biogeographical evidence. Late Pleistocene eolian sediments and buried soils indicate that large areas of the Beringian lowlands had nutrient-rich, silty soils that occurred over ice-rich permafrost but were generally not waterlogged. A list of likely grasses was compiled from all species that have been recorded on similar fine-grained, mesic-to-dry lowland soils (i.e., presumed refugia) and are distributed at least sporadically across the whole region today. Grasses from 13 genera met these criteria, including most of the taxa that have been identified as late Pleistocene fossils from the study area. Most of these grasses are high-latitude species of genera that are also common in temperate latitudes (e.g., Elymus, Festuca, and Poa). This diverse group of plants has a wide range of adaptations today, suggesting that grasses would have been available to occupy a variety of habitats through Pleistocene climatic fluctuations. Among these grasses are a number of highly productive forage species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]