Understanding the acceptance and perceptions of renewable energy is key to facilitating their sustainable development in northern communities say researchers Jennifer Schmidt and Amanda Byrd. Alaskans in rural areas are faced with a number of challenges, including increasing costs for energy and imported foods into their remote communities. Many residents rely on subsistence foods as part of their culture, but also to avoid high prices in the local store. Communities have begun turning to renewable energy to make energy more affordable as well. Schmidt and Byrd examined the connection between renewable energy and subsistence activities in a new paper.
Alaska has natural resources of many kinds—fish and wildlife; oil and gas and metal deposits; thousands of lakes and rivers; and scenic beauty and wilderness areas, to name some. ISER researchers study many facets of the state’s natural resources—and forces that affect those resources—including commercial, subsistence, and sport fisheries; land and wildlife management issues; health of ecosystems; threats from invasive species; and people’s response to environmental change and risk.
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Jennifer Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources Management and Policy, presented a fuel treatments database project in October at the Fall Fire Review, an annual event convened by the Alaska Wildland Fire Coordinating Group (AWFCG), the body that oversees fire management in the state.
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“The McKinley Fire: Rebuilding and Lessons Learned” is a joint production of UAA Institute of Social Economic Research, Alaska Center for Energy and Power, and Alaska NSF EPSCoR (National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). The video is part of EPSCoR’s Fire & Ice project, a five-year study of climate-driven changes to Alaska’s coastal margins and boreal wildfires.
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Alaskans care about their environment. Whenever we discuss development and conservation proposals, there is always a discussion about whether our water and air are being protected and whether some industries have a good record protecting our air and water. Or not.
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Dr. Jennifer Schmidt recently gave two presentations on environmental hazards. The first was with the Alaska Fire Science Consortium’s spring workshop where she presented on “Arctic Urban Adaptations (AURA): a co-production framework for addressing multiple changing environmental hazards.” The slides for the presentation are available for download and the video recording of the presentation is above.
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The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s Dr. Tobias Schwoerer, Dr. Jennifer Schmidt, and Kyle Borash alongside the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Dr. Joseph Little, published a new article, “Hitchhikers on floats to Arctic freshwater: Private aviation and recreation loss from aquatic invasion”, in the latest issue of Ambio.
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The Institute for Social and Economic Research’s Dr. Tobias Schwoerer was recently featured on SeafoodSource.com to discuss elodea and its risk to Alaska’s sockeye salmon fisheries.
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Anyone who has seen a food web of a marine ecosystem has seen a model in which little fish eat plankton, medium-sized fish eat little fish, and the biggest fish eat everything else. A food web is a familiar way to conceptualize the ecological connectivity of marine species. In a paper titled “Defining the Economic Scope for Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management”, and published this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we pose and examine the question: could a parallel model be used to conceptualize economic connectivity and explore the management implications of policy choices?
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Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) and Professor of Economics, Dr. Ralph Townsend, recently presented three invited talks on fisheries management in the United Kingdom. The first, “Lessons from International Experiences in Fisheries Self-governance” at the Future of Inshore Fisheries Conference in London, attracted 150 people from the fishing industry, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations involved in the U.K. inshore fisheries and was motivated, in part, by opportunities for the U.K.
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The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s (ISER) Assistant Professor of Natural Resources Management, Dr. Jennifer Schmidt, was recently published in Bloomberg Law News discussing the rising wildfire risk in Alaska. In the article, Dr. Schmidt explains the impact of climate and society on risk in the wildland urban interface (WUI) and suggests actions that can be taken to lower that threat. While climate change is certainly a major factor in the increased danger, development in high-risk areas without taking the proper precautionary measures is another facet of the growing threat.