Alaska

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Research on school finance, the teacher workforce, and related topics in Alaska

This is a list of recent publications and reports by CAEPR and ISER focused on school finance, teacher workforce issues (recruitment, retention, and turnover),and related topics. This represents only a small portion of the education-related products from CAEPR and ISER. All CAEPR/ISER reports are available on the web at Scholarworks@UA, and you can see many of our peer-reviewed journal publications on journal websites or via the UAA/APU Consortium Library.

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Spatial distribution of wildfire threat in the far north: exposure assessment in boreal communities

Increased wildfire activity has raised concerns among communities about how to assess and prepare for this threat. There is a need for wildfire hazard assessment approaches that capture local variability to inform decisions, produce results understood by the public, and are updatable in a timely manner. In this article, Schmidt and her co-authors describe how, in partnership with wildfire practitioners and communities, they created a tool that rapidly assesses wildfire hazards and is easily modified to help identify and prioritize mitigation activities.

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Predicting the Unpredictable: Predicting Landcover in Boreal Alaska and the Yukon Including Succession and Wildfire Potential

In this paper we modified an existing landcover dataset to better identify vegetation associated with wildfire and permafrost in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Whitehorse over the past 4 decades (1984-2014) and make predictions for the next 4 decades (2024-2054).  We used an existing fire model called FlamMap and several statistical analyses to determine where future fires could be possible.

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Research meets policy at the Arctic Encounter Symposium

The 2022 Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage brought together researchers and leaders from government, the business community, the University of Alaska, and ambassadors of Arctic nations. ISER Director Diane Hirshberg served on a panel related to workforce development.