Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Alaska
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Our research program focuses on social-ecological resilience and response to change by integrating four components. (1) Studying past and current direct effects of climate change on ecosystems and key disturbance regimes (fire, permafrost thaw, insect/pathogen outbreaks) at local and regional scales; (2) understanding mechanisms and consequences for how climate-disturbance interactions drive changes in ecosystems and landscape structure and heterogeneity; (3) modeling the effects of interactions among changes in climate, ecosystem structure and function, and disturbance regimes on regional ecosystem dynamics and climate feedbacks (forest-atmosphere exchanges of trace gases, water, and energy); and (4) studying how climate variability and change are affecting the coupled social-ecological dynamics of rural Alaskan villages by understanding how changes in ecosystem services are affecting community resilience and helping to identify opportunities for adaptation and/or transformation of community practices.