Lunchtime Talks

Reinhold Sackmann, Dr. rer.pol. habil., is Full Professor for Sociology, Dynamic Analysis of Social Structure, at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. His fields of research are life course analysis, sociology of education and coping with demographic change. He talks about how after accelerated population growth in the last two centuries, in a number of European and East Asian countries there are signs of a stagnant, sometimes shrinking population that is getting older and more heterogeneous. What are the effects of this new situation? Is there scope to modify effects of these new trends? Dr. Sackmann conducted a longitudinal data analysis of German school systems from 1995-2010, which shows that demographic change has had a profound effect on the institutional system of the education system, which for a long time was seen as a path dependent system that could not be transformed by political reforms.

Jessica Cherry, a research associate professor at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center, will discuss the physics and economics of climate impacts on hydropower, as well as valuation of observational systems relating to climate and water, using examples from Scandinavia, Alaska, and California. Norway has significant observational infrastructure, allowing researchers to see strong connections between precipitation and supply, air temperature and demand, and electricity price and trade volumes. In Southeast Alaska, which has few such observational systems, there are technological challenges in providing geophysical data to hydropower operators, and additional challenges in measuring the value of improved forecasting. Jessica Cherry holds a PhD in climate physics from Columbia University in New York. This presentation is open to the public, but Dr. Cherry hopes that it will also lead to discussions and potential research relationships with researchers from ISER and other organizations.

Historically and into the present day, herring and herring roe (tskah and xs'waanx) have provided the Tsimshian people of British Columbia with a range of food resources, both the fish itself—fresh, dried, or smoked—and the roe in several forms. But indigenous use has narrowed since the arrival of non-indigenous peoples. In this talk, Charles Menzies, a professor of social anthropology at the University of British Columbia, will describe the causes and implications of this narrowing of herring use among the Tsimshian, discussing the topic through archaeological, ethnographic, and indigenous-knowledge approaches. Dr. Menzies was formerly a commercial fisherman, and his research is predominantly fisheries-related, involving both indigenous and non-indigenous communities on the north coast of British Columbia. He also produces and directs documentary films, primarily about fishing communities.

Sitka Sound in Southeast Alaska is home to one of the state’s largest commercially viable stocks of Pacific herring, which are harvested for their roe (eggs) in the spring, just before they spawn. There is also a subsistence herring fishery in Sitka Sound, with subsistence users collecting the roe after the herring spawn. In recent years, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has increased the commercial guideline harvest level—and conflict between commercial and subsistence fishermen has also increased. James Shewmake, a research professional at ISER, earned his master's in natural resource management for his research on the subsistence herring fishery in Sitka Sound. He found that the size of the subsistence harvest depends not only on how many people participate, but also on other measures of participants’ effort and on harvesting opportunities.

The Barents region is a sprawling area of international cooperation that includes the northernmost parts of Sweden, Norway, and Finland, as well as Northwest Russia. It was created under an agreement among those countries in the early 1990s. Thomas Nilsen is the editor of BarentsObserver.com, an online public affairs and news site operated by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, which promotes cooperation among Barents member countries, particularly cooperation between Norway and Russia. At ISER, Mr. Nilsen talked about a range of topics, including Arctic oil and gas drilling in Norwegian waters, transportation of oil in Norwegian and Russian Arctic waters, potential routes across the Arctic as sea ice melts, and the Norwegian government’s High North policies and strategies for promoting economic and social development in the Arctic. Mr. Nilsen's visit to the United States was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program.

Jose Polanco, a professor of marketing and economics at the University of Cantabria, in Santander, Spain, is an expert on European seafood retailers and consumers and the Spanish seafood market. He talked about how the Spanish seafood market combines both old traditions—such as consumer fish markets—with new trends, such as growing supermarket sales of frozen fish and rapidly growing imports of farmed pangasius and other whitefish. Download the presentation (PDF, 1.57MB).

The TUNDRA project is an international study, with researchers from Norway, Russia, Canada, and Alaska examining the influence of society and governance on subsistence and land use among the people who live on the tundra in the Circumpolar North. Jennifer Schmidt, a researcher at the University of Tromsø, Norway, is part of the project team. She also describes other socio-ecological projects underway in Norway and Europe—and opportunities for researchers from different disciplines to collaborate on such research. To learn more about the TUNDRA project, visit: http://site.uit.no/tundra/researchers/

In the 1970s, the state and federal governments began "privatizing" access to Alaska's commercial fisheries—that is, they either issued permits or assigned shares of the catch to a limited number of fishermen. Those permits and quota shares are commodities that can be bought and sold on the market. Scholars and fishermen alike view this privatization as a fundamental driver of change in fishing livelihoods and communities. Courtney Carothers, an associate professor in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF, has studied some of the social and cultural effects of the shift to privatization in Kodiak, one of Alaska's major fishing communities. Hear Dr. Carothers talk about the results of her research.

For ten years, the United States has been mapping the continental shelf in all of its marine regions—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. Betsy Baker, a professor at Vermont Law School, has sailed with two of the Arctic mapping cruises on the USCGC Healy, and recently completed ten months in the Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, at the U.S. State Department, preparing documentation to help establish the extent of U.S. continental shelf rights under international law. Dr. Baker spoke at ISER November 14, 2013 about that process and the practical implications for Alaska’s Arctic, as well as developments in the Gulf of Mexico.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in funding to help developing countries adapt to climate change. As those funds increase, scholars and policymakers have been raising more questions about how such adaptations should be funded—and in particular about how adaptations to climate change should be linked with existing development policies. Maureen Biermann, a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University, is examining how a leading international institution at the United Nations is dealing with that issue as it finances climate-change adaptations. She spoke at ISER November 13, 2013.