Social-ecological soundscapes: examining aircraft-harvester-caribou conflict in Arctic Alaska

• Main Author: Stinchcomb, Taylor R.
• Other Authors: Brinkman, Todd J., Hundertmark, Kris, Fritz, Stacey A.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Caribou; Effect of noise on; Alaska; North Slope; Caribou hunting; Airplanes; Noise; Environmental aspects; Animals; Arctic; Fairbanks; Alaska North Slope; north slope; Rangifer tarandus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/8143

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017 As human development expands across the Arctic, it is crucial to carefully assess the impacts to remote natural ecosystems and to indigenous communities that rely on wild resources for nutritional and cultural wellbeing. Because indigenous communities and wildlife populations are interdependent, assessing how human activities impact traditional harvest practices can advance our understanding of the human dimensions of wildlife management. Indigenous communities across Arctic Alaska have expressed concern over the last four decades that low-flying aircraft interfere with their traditional harvest practices. For example, communities often have testified that aircraft disturb caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and thereby reduce harvest opportunities. Despite this longstanding concern, little research exists on the extent of aircraft activity in Arctic Alaska and on how aircraft affect the behavior and perceptions of harvesters. Therefore, the overarching goal of my research was to highlight the importance of aircraft-harvester conflict in Arctic Alaska and begin to address the issue using a scientific and community-driven approach. In Chapter 1, I demonstrated that conflict between aircraft and indigenous harvesters in Arctic Alaska is a widespread, understudied, and complex issue. By conducting a meta-analysis of the available literature, I quantified the deficiency of scientific knowledge about the impacts of aircraft on rural communities and traditional harvest practices in the Arctic. My results indicated that no peer-reviewed literature has addressed the conflict between low-flying aircraft and traditional harvesters in Arctic Alaska. I speculated that the scale over which aircraft, rural communities, and wildlife interact limits scientists' ability to determine causal relationships and therefore detracts from their interest in researching the human dimension of this social-ecological system. Innovative research approaches like soundscape ecology could begin to ...