Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
Climate System - Social System Interactions in the Northern Atlantic
Lawrence C. Hamilton1
1Sociology Department, University of New Hampshire, 20 College Road, Durham, NH, 03824, USA, Phone 603-862-1859, Fax 603-862-3558, Lawrence.Hamilton@unh.edu
Large-scale environmental changes involving the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Arctic-origin Great Salinity Anomalies (GSAs) have affected fisheries-dependent societies across the northern Atlantic in recent decades. Recurrent themes appear in many of these stories.
- Time plots show spikes of overfishing followed by steep declines, sometimes becoming a multi-decade collapse.
- Declines commonly involve interactions between fishing fishing pressure and environmental variations associated with the NAO and/or GSAs.
- Fisheries adapt to the loss of traditional resources, where possible, by shifting efforts to target a wider range of species, particularly crustaceans, which become more abundant as bony fish grow scarce.
- For ecological as well as economic reasons, the new fisheries tend to be more capital-intensive and less labor-intensive compared with the old.
- As ecosystems and fisheries change, there are winners and losers on land.
- Many small communities experience selective outmigration and demographic change.
- Social factors influence the differential outcomes among people and communities.
Illustrations of such ecosystem-society interactions are drawn from recent case studies of fisheries-dependent regions in Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Common elements from these case studies suggest general patterns in the human dimensions of large-scale environmental change.
Abstract Categories: Social Feedbacks
Back to main abstract page
To view the list of records returned in your search you can use your browser's
back button, or perform the same search again:
| 