Natural Resources

Much of the natural-resource development in Alaska happens in isolated, rural areas. Do local residents get jobs and other benefits from those developments? Mouhcine Guettabi, an assistant professor of economics at ISER, is assessing that question in two papers he is currently working on.

In the first paper, he is using employment by place of work and by place of residence to determine whether local residents of an isolated borough with oil development get a share of the new jobs created when oil prices spike up. In the second, he is looking at the causal effects of the Red Dog mine on employment, wages, and other measures in the Northwest Arctic Borough, where the mine has been operating since the 1980s.

Please join us at ISER to hear what he has found so far.

When: Friday, April 28, 12 to 1

Andreas Pflitsch is a professor of physical geography at Ruhr University in the German city of Bochum. He has studied climatic conditions in ice caves in a number of U.S. states since 1996.

At ISER, he’ll talk about his research in ice caves in Alaska and in glacial caves on volcanoes in Oregon and Washington. Many glaciers have far-reaching cave systems in the ice, and Dr. Pflitsch's work is some of the first to assess climatic conditions in those caves. Join us at ISER to hear what he's learned.

When: Thursday, March 23, 12 to 1

No one has automatic rights to use water in Alaska: the state constitution defines water as a public resource, and the state government decides who can use water, how much, and for what. That's true on both public and private land, and for all landowners—government agencies, businesses, and individual Alaskans.

Anyone who wants to use a significant amount of water has to apply to the state for water rights. A new paper by Marie Lowe and Linda Leask of ISER explains the basics of water rights in Alaska: what they are, when you need them, how to apply for them, and how many have been issued so far.

Download the paper, Understanding Water Rights in Alaska (PDF, 637KB). A supplemental file (PDF, 3.9MB) of some cited references is also available. If you have questions, get in touch with Marie Lowe, associate professor of public policy, at mlowe@alaska.edu or 907-786-6534.

Commercial and recreational fisheries are very different: the commercial fishery is a resource extraction, processing, and retailing industry; the recreational fishery is a form of outdoor recreation, influenced not only by the availability of fish but by the environmental setting and other factors aside from fish. How can we make a fair comparison of their economic value?

Gordon Gislason, a fisheries economist from Vancouver, British Columbia, talks about a framework he has developed for analyzing and comparing the economic value of the two kinds of fisheries. As a case study, he estimated the commercial and recreational values of Chinook salmon in Pacific Canada. Please join us to hear what he found.

A new report by Bob Loeffler and Jennifer Schmidt of ISER looks at jobs and income residents of small Bristol Bay communities received during exploration at the proposed Pebble mine site from 2009 through 2012. That proposed mine is enormously controversial, because of its proximity to the world-class Bristol Bay salmon fisheries, and there has been no exploration since 2013. The authors emphasize they are neither endorsing nor opposing the proposed mine. Rather, they assessed the economic effects of Pebble exploration on local communities as a case study in how small, remote communities can capture more of the benefits of rural resource development.

They found that about 43% of the workers at the Pebble exploration site from 2009 through 2012 were residents of 18 small Bristol Bay communities. That totaled about 300 Bristol Bay residents over the four-year period. Residents of the seven communities closest to the exploration site got the most jobs and income, averaging 100 jobs a year and bringing nearly $1.5 million into their communities annually. Almost all the jobs were seasonal, and pay averaged $19 an hour.

Download the summary (PDF, 454KB) or the full report (PDF, 2MB). If you have questions, get in touch with Bob Loeffler at rloeffle@alaska.edu or call 907-250-4621. You can also contact Jennifer Schmidt at jischmidt0@gmail.com or call 907-786-5497.

Many of the global-scale environmental and social challenges humanity faces today are daunting and difficult for policymakers to address, but the regional landscape remains at a scale that makes it possible for regional governance systems to make meaningful change. In this presentation, Lael Parrott, a professor in sustainability at the University of British Columbia, explores the relationship between complexity, resilience, and sustainability at the landscape scale.

When: Thursday, September 22, 12 to 1
Where: ISER Conference Room, Third Floor, 1901 Bragaw St.

Dr. Parrott’s visit to Anchorage is hosted by UAA’s Complex Systems Initiative, and is co-sponsored by UAA Honors College and ISER. She will deliver the Helen and Lee Gorsuch Lecture, “Slow Down and Save the Whales,” Thursday, September 22, at 7 p.m. in the UAA Arts Building. For more information go to: http://greenandgold.uaa.alaska.edu/blog/tag/lael-parrott/

Note: This presentation will not be recorded or live streamed.

Updated February 4, 2016

Researchers at ISER and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources are surveying floatplane pilots, to collect information that will help state and federal resource managers protect remote lakes and streams from invasive plants.

Learn more about this survey.

Note: This post is not the survey. If you received a letter from us, please enter the personalized link you are provided with into the URL address field of your Internet browser (usually in the top left corner of the browser window). It should look similar to: http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/A#### (where the # is your personalized ID). Do NOT enter this link into google search or the search field of your browser.

You are in the right place when you see the survey and a personalized greeting containing your first and last name.

How do taxes and other revenues the state government collects from the commercial fishing, mining, and tourism industries compare with what the state spends to manage them? That’s the question the Alaska Division of Economic Development asked ISER researchers Bob Loeffler and Steve Colt to answer. In a new study, the researchers report their findings, but they first emphasize that their study is not a broad analysis of all the benefits and costs of these industries, which would also weigh many other factors—including the substantial income and thousands of jobs the industries generate for Alaskans. The researchers also point out that the state’s management goals for these industries include many things besides collecting taxes, and that their study does not say anything about what taxes on these industries should be.

The authors found that commercial fishing, mining, and tourism all generate combined state and local revenues in the same ballpark—averaging about $120 million to $135 million annually in recent years. All three industries pay more in combined state and local taxes than the state spends to manage them, with revenues from tourism and commercial fishing particularly important to local governments: 60% of the revenue from tourism and 40% from fishing goes to local governments. Counting only state revenues (excluding local revenues), the state spends more to manage fishing than it collects from the industry. State revenues from tourism roughly equal what the state spends for management. Mining brings in about six times more than the state spends to manage it.

Bob Loeffler is a visiting professor of public policy at ISER, funded by a grant to the University of Alaska Foundation from the Council of Alaska Producers. Steve Colt is a professor of economics at ISER. The report findings are those of the authors, not ISER, the University of Alaska Anchorage, or the research sponsors.

Download the summary (PDF, 734 KB) or the full report (PDF, 2.6 MB), Fiscal Effects of Commercial Fishing, Mining, and Tourism. If you have questions, get in touch with Bob Loeffler at bobl@uaa.alaska.edu or 907-250-4621.

Anticipating the Paris Climate Agreement: Politics and Expectations at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate

Late in 2015, the U.N. Climate Change Conference will take place in Paris, bringing countries together to consider a new climate agreement. In a talk at ISER, Alexios Antypas of Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, discussed negotiations to date on the new climate agreement, identified political controversies, and explored likely and possible outcomes. Dr. Antypas is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy. He specializes in the field of environmental policy and governance and has published widely on environmental policy issues.

Ecosystem services is the term often used to describe goods and services we get from ecosystems—like salmon habitat or clean air. These things are valuable, but they aren’t usually bought or sold in the marketplace. Ecosystem service valuation assigns a dollar value to them. David Batker, executive director of Earth Economics, talks about the tools being used to identify and value ecosystem services. Such valuation can help policymakers as they make decisions about resource management and sustainable economic development.