Assessing climate change vulnerability in Alaska's fishing communities

Abstract

Alaska's communities are experiencing impacts from unprecedented climate-related changes in the harvests of natural resources. Residents of rural Alaska are reporting heretofore unseen changes in the geographic distribution and abundance of marine resources, increases in the frequency and ferocity of storm surges in the Bering Sea, changes in the distribution and thickness of sea ice, and increases in river and coastal erosion. When combined with ongoing socio-economic change, climate, weather, and changes in the biophysical system interact in a complex web of feedbacks and interactions that make life in rural Alaska challenging.We present a framework of indicators to assess three basic constituents of community vulnerability: exposure to the bio-physical effects of climate change, dependence on resources that will be affected by climate change, and a community's adaptive capacity to offset negative impacts of climate change. We conduct three principal components analyses, one for each vulnerability constituent, for 315 Alaska communities to assess each community's overall vulnerability to climate change. This research can be used to inform communities about the ways in which their communities are vulnerable to climate change and help develop adaptation strategies. While this study focuses on Alaska communities, the framework is easily adaptable to other regions with different risk factors and sensitivities to climate change.