Environmental, cultural, and social change in Arctic Alaska as observed by Iñupiat elders over their lifetimes: a GIS synthesis

Abstract

Since 2003 our research team has been interviewing Iñupiat elders and incorporating their indigenous knowledge (IK) about the environment into a specially designed Geographic Information System (GIS). We present a synthesis of the climate and landscape change information shared during the IK GIS project. We also summarize observations, which are not geographically specific and thus not expressible as GIS data points. We present several analyses of our dataset to date. These include a frequency analysis of the topically classified geocoded observations based on elder interviews, a summary of the geographic distribution of those observations, and a discussion of non-georeferenced observations. We identify several themes that IK holders and elders felt were crucial to record and discuss. Many of these observations include environmental, cultural, and historical knowledge, and reflect the perception that their world has substantially changed in the course of their lifetimes.