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Impacts of a lengthening open water season on Alaskan coastal communities
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Copernicus GmbH, 2017.
-
Abstract
- It is often remarked that Arctic coastal communities are on the frontlines of the impacts related to the rapidly diminishing ice pack. These impacts can have direct effects on communities, such as reduced access to subsistence hunting species, or increased wave height and coastal erosion. There are also indirect effects driven by external socioeconomic systems, such as increased maritime activity, which may provide local economic benefits while increasing potential for disruption to subsistence activities. Here, we use the Historical Sea Ice Atlas (HSIA) dataset to assess the potential direct and indirect impacts from sea ice change for selected Alaska communities. The HSIA provides sea ice concentration for the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas on a 0.25-degree grid for the period 1953–2013. We estimate the timing of freeze-up and break-up, which is reported by local residents to be of critical importance for subsistence hunting activities and food security. We calculate the open water season length and extend the existing timeseries of the Barnett Severity Index (BSI), which assesses the impact of ice conditions on maritime traffic destined for the Beaufort Sea. We find consistent trends toward later freeze-up and earlier break-up, leading to a lengthened open water period. In Utqiavik (formerly Barrow), there is evidence of a navigational regime change in the 1990s when the pack ice edge started to routinely retreat beyond this most northern community.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Arctic sea ice decline
geography
geography.geographical_feature_category
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
medicine.medical_treatment
Subsistence agriculture
01 natural sciences
Arctic ice pack
Coastal erosion
010601 ecology
Oceanography
Arctic
medicine
Sea ice
Ice pack
Physical geography
Sea ice concentration
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........f2d240820f98ea1135a66f911619dee3