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How will climate change affect the sustainability of Arctic villages over the next 40 years? This question motivated a collaboration of 23 researchers and four Arctic communities (Old Crow, Yukon Territory, Canada; Aklavik, Northwest Territories, Canada; Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, Canada; and Arctic Village, Alaska, USA) in or near the range of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. We drew on existing research and local knowledge to examine potential effects of climate change, petroleum development, tourism, and government spending cutbacks on the sustainability of four Arctic villages. We used data across eight disciplines to develop an Arctic Community Synthesis Model and a Web-based, interactive Possible Futures Model. Results suggested that climate warming will increase vegetation biomass within the herd’s summer range. However, despite forage increasing, the herd was projected as likely to decline with a warming climate because of increased insect harassment in the summer and potentially greater winter snow depths. There was a strong negative correlation between hypothetical, development-induced displacement of cows and calves from utilized calving grounds and calf survival during June. The results suggested that climate warming coupled with petroleum development would cause a decline in caribou harvest by local communities. Because the Synthesis Model inherits uncertainties associated with each component model, sensitivity analysis is required. Scientists and stakeholders agreed that (1) although simulation models are incomplete abstractions of the real world, they helped bring scientific and community knowledge together, and (2) relationships established across disciplines and between scientists and communities were a valuable outcome of the study. Additional project materials, including the Web-based Possible Futures Model, are available at http://www.taiga.net/sustain.

There have been many energy projects proposed in Alaska over the past several decades, from large scale hydro projects that have never been built to small scale village power projects to use local alternative energy sources, many of which have also not been built. This project was initially intended to review these rejected projects to evaluate the economic feasibility of these ideas in the light of current economics. This review included contacting the agencies responsible for reviewing and funding these projects in Alaska, including the Alaska Energy Authority, the Denali Commission, and the Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory, obtaining available information about these projects, and analyzing the economic data. Unfortunately, the most apparent result of this effort was that the data associated with these projects was not collected in a systematic way that allowed this information to be analyzed.