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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The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced it would award $18.3 million across 16 projects to researchers funded by the National Science Foundation's Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (CNH2) program.
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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.
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The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s Dr. Tobias Schwoerer, was featured by KTUU to discuss elodea and its potential impact on Alaska's salmon industry, should the state be unsuccessful in eradicating the invasive aquatic plant. Elodea has previously been used as an aquarium plant and for lab kits in biology classes. The State no longer allows the plant to be sold in Alaska.
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October 25, 2019 Update: Presentation is now available for download, link below. Ocean acidification is expected to impact Alaska’s marine species and the $5.8 billion seafood industry. Higher acidity water affects the ability of shell-building organisms, like crabs, to develop and maintain their shells and may also affect the behavior of some fish species. Alaska is predisposed to ocean acidification due to its colder water temperature, making it likely that we will feel the effects sooner and more intensely than other regions.
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ISER’s former director, Gunnar Knapp, Professor Emeritus of Economics, gave a presentation on “Long-Term Trends in the Pacific Salmon Industry” at the Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Reno, Nevada on October 1st, 2019. Knapp was an invited speaker at a symposium on “The Science of Pacific Salmon Conservation: Foundations, Myths, and Emerging Insights.”
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This summer, Alaska’s high temperatures broke records causing more Alaskans than ever to experience the effects of widespread wildfires. Wildfires, along with unstable permafrost, and rain-in-winter are natural hazards of climate change that put residents and property at risk. Assessing the costs, risks, and actions necessary to adapt to or mitigate damage from these hazards in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon, is the subject of a newly funded 4-year, $1.1 million National Science Foundation project, led by ISER’s Jennifer Schmidt.
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Can countries be fair, prosperous, and green? That’s one of the questions that Kevin Berry, assistant professor of economics at ISER, considered with his colleagues at a recent meeting of the Beijer Young Scholars Programme in Stockholm, Sweden.