(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - Climate change impacts are unique in the Southeast Alaska region and include impacts such as heavy rains causing flooding, ocean acidification, warmer waters, snowfall variations, warm springs followed by frost affecting wild berry production, invasive species, and toxins in the marine environment. These factors impact food security and culturally important resources.

On September 22-23, 2016 Alaska Sea Grant, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska will be hosting a workshop in Ketchikan at the Cape Fox Lodge to review climate change impacts to five subsistence and cultural resources that have been identified by Southeast Tribes as their highest concern; salmon, shellfish, berries, cedar, and cultural resources. These five resources were identified in December 2015 at a workshop hosted by the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes of Washington in collaboration with Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and Sitka Tribe of Alaska.

The first day of the workshop in Ketchikan will review the climate change impacts to these resources. At the end of the first day Tribes, university, and agency representatives will work together in group discussions to come up with monitoring and adaptation strategies that Tribes have the capacity to implement quickly to address these 5 resources.

The following day there will be presentations from agency and university researchers on some of the latest monitoring efforts and practices that could work for tribes to give them additional ideas. This will be followed by brief presentations on potential future adaptation efforts. At the end of the second day environmental coordinators from Tribes will write draft work plans for the coming year that include some of these monitoring and adaptation efforts. Quoting a news release, this summit will hopefully be a critical step in operationalizing climate adaptation planning for Tribes in Southeast Alaska.

Reporting & Editing by Mary Kauffman, SitNews

Source of News:

Alaska Sea Grant is part of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and part of the National Sea Grant Program, a division of NOAA
https://seagrant.uaf.edu

 

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