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Northern communities are experiencing greater climate variability, with extreme climate impacts occurring more frequently and with more intensity; with the need for adaptation to reduce the risk becoming more immediate. Specific stressors and decision dynamics surrounding the nature of local government policy and planning for climate adaptation are underrepresented in the scholarship. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring the case of Homer, Alaska. Through narratives of key informants connected to the community's climate change agenda, this research explores primary climate stressors and the nature of adaptation policy integration. Findings suggests that while Homer is experiencing a variety of climate change impacts, adaptation remains a low priority for city officials. This study sheds light on some of the challenges of integrating climate adaptation policy with strategic community planning, and in turn provides decision-makers with insight into considerations for mainstreaming resilience thinking at a local government scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given current and projected warming trends in the Arctic and the important role played by subsistence hunting and fishing in the life of northern rural communities, it is increasingly important to document local observations of climate change and its impacts on livelihood practices. We describe ethnographic research exploring local observations of climate changes and related impacts on subsistence fisheries in three Iñupiat communities in northwest Alaska and six Athabascan communities in the Yukon River drainage. We found consistent agreement among perceptions concerning a broad range of environmental changes affecting subsistence practices in these communities. These observations of environmental changes are not experienced in isolation but within the context of accompanying social changes that are continually reshaping rural Alaskan communities and subsistence economies. In this paper we reflect on our research approach combining multiple methods of inquiry. Participant observation and semidirected interviews provided the conceptual framework for broadening our focus from climate and environmental change to community residents' understanding of climate change in the context of their holistic human-environment worldview. Cultural consensus analysis allowed us to assess the extent to which perceptions of change are shared among hunters and fishers within and between villages and regions and to identify those phenomena occurring or experienced at smaller scales. Reflecting on this multimethods approach, we highlight important questions that have emerged about how we understand, synthesize, and represent local knowledge, especially as it is used in regulatory or management arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Arctic ecosystems experience increases in surface air temperatures, plot-level analyses of tundra vegetation composition suggest that there are important changes occurring in tundra communities that are typified by increases in shrubs and declines in non-vascular species. At the same time analyses of NDVI indicate that the Arctic tundra is greening. Few studies have combined plot-level trends in species composition and cover with remote sensing measurements to understand the linkages between tundra vegetation dynamics and NDVI over time. This study reports on trends in species composition for field plots in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in NE Alaska from 1984 to 2009 and links these trends to the trends in NDVI at fine and coarse scales. Over this time frame there were few changes in plant community composition. None of the five tundra types that were measured had increases in total vegetative cover, and deciduous shrub cover did not show the large increases reported elsewhere. Surface-(plot) measured NDVI was positively correlated to deciduous and evergreen shrub composition suggesting that these functional groups had a strong influence on NDVI values. Modeled values of NDVI, derived from measures of deciduous and evergreen shrub composition over time, decreased slightly for tussock tundra but did not change for other tundra types. This result suggests that surface NDVI did not change over time on these tundra types. Fine-scale (30-m pixels) Landsat NDVI also did not show any changes for the pixels located at the permanent plots (1992-2009). However, coarse-scale (8-km pixels) AVHRR NDVI across the study area did increase (1988-2007). Furthermore, aggregate values of Landsat pixels matching the same area as AVHRR pixels also did not show significant changes over time. Although Landsat NDVI was consistent with surface-measured NDVI, AVHRR NDVI was not. AVHRR NDVI values showed increases that were in neither the field nor Landsat data. This result suggests that AVHRR may be demonstrating increasing trends in NDVI that are not occurring on the ground in some Arctic tundra ecosystems. These results highlight the need to combine remote sensing with on-the-ground measurements of plant community composition and NDVI in the analysis of the responses of Arctic tundra ecosystems to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]