Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
Adaptation and Sustainability in a Small Arctic Community: Results of an Agent-Based Simulation Model
Matthew Berman1, Craig Nicolson2, Gary Kofinas3, Stephanie Martin4
1Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK, 99508, USA, Phone (907)786-7716, matt.berman@uaa.alaska.edu
2Department of Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 160 Holdsworth Way, Amherst, MA, 01003-4210, USA, Phone 413-545-3154, Fax 413-545-4358, craign@forwild.umass.edu
3Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, PO Box 757000, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-7000, USA, Phone 907-474-7078, Fax 907-474-6967, ffgpk@uaf.edu
4Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK, 99508, USA, Phone 907-345-8130, Fax 907-345-8130, anslm1@uaa.alaska.edu
Climate warming could affect abundance, distribution, and access to wildlife that arctic communities harvest for subsistence. Another set of global forces increasingly directs local cash economies that support the logistics of subsistence activities as well as provide market consumption goods. Agent-based computational models may contribute to an integrated assessment of community sustainability by simulating how people interact with each other and adapt to changing economic and environmental conditions.
Relying on local knowledge to provide qualitative rules for individual and collective decision-making and to estimate parameter values where other data are unavailable, the model generates hypothetical futures as adaptations to scenario-driven changes in environmental and economic conditions. The model projects wage employment, cash income, subsistence harvests, and demographic change over four decades based on a set of user-defined scenarios for climate change, development, and government spending. Simulated outcomes for one Canadian Arctic Community -- Old Crow, YT -- assess how potential adverse economic events or a warmer climate (or both occurring at once) might affect the local economy, resources harvests, and the well-being of residents.
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