Abstract: The development of policies that promote ecological, economic, and cultural sustainability and resilience requires collaboration between natural and social scientists. We present a modeling approach to facilitate this communication and illustrate its application to studies of wildfire in interior Alaska. We abstract the essence of complex fire-vegetation interactions that occur in the real world into a simplified model world represented by a landscape model. We then describe how equally complex fire-human interactions could be incorporated into a similar modeling framework. Simulations suggest that fire suppression is likely to increase the proportion of flammable vegetation on the landscape, reduce the long-term effectiveness of wildfire suppression, and reduce the resilience of the human-fire-vegetation system. The use of simple models to test the consequences of assumptions provides a vehicle for objective communication between natural and social scientists to explore the long-term consequences of alternative policy scenarios.

Abstract: Fire is the keystone disturbance in the Alaskan boreal forest and is highly influenced by summer weather patterns. Records from the last fifty-three years reveal high variability in the annual area burned in Alaska and corresponding high variability in weather occurring at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Here we use multiple linear regression (MLR) to systematically explore the relationships between climate variables and the annual area burned in Alaska. Variation in the seasonality of the atmospheric circulation-fire linkage is addressed through an evaluation of both the East Pacific teleconnection field and a Pacific Decadal Oscillation index keyed to an annual fire index. In the MLR, seven explanatory variables and an interaction term collectively explain 79% of the variability in the natural logarithm of the number of hectares burned annually by lightning-caused fires in Alaska from 1950-2003. The results of this work suggest that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the East Pacific teleconnection indices can be useful in determining a priori an estimate of the number of hectares that will burn in an upcoming season. This information also provides insight into the link between ocean-atmosphere interactions and the fire disturbance regime in Alaska.

Abstract: Community workshops are widely used tools for collaborative research on social-ecological resilience in indigenous communities. Although results have been reported in many publications, few have reflected explicitly on the workshop itself, and specifically on understanding what is said during a workshop. Drawing on experience from workshops held in Huslia, Alaska in 2004 on wildfire and climate change, we discuss the importance of considering cultural, political, and epistemological context when analyzing statements made by indigenous people in community workshops. We provide examples of statements whose meaning and intent were, and may remain, unclear, with descriptions of our attempts to understand what was being said by placing the statements in a variety of contexts. We conclude that, although workshops can be an efficient means of exchanging information, researchers should strive for multiple channels of communication and should be cautious in their interpretations of what is said.

Abstract: Caribou are an integral component of high latitude ecosystems and represent a major subsistence food source for many northern people. The availability and quality of winter habitat is critical to sustain these caribou populations. Caribou commonly use older spruce woodlands with adequate terrestrial lichen, a preferred winter forage, in the understory. Changes in climate and fire regime pose a significant threat to the long-term sustainability of this important winter habitat. Computer simulations performed with a spatially explicit vegetation succession model (ALFRESCO) indicate that changes in the frequency and extent of fire in interior Alaska may substantially impact the abundance and quality of winter habitat for caribou. We modeled four different fire scenarios and tracked the frequency, extent, and spatial distribution of the simulated fires and associated changes to vegetation composition and distribution. Our results suggest that shorter fire frequencies (i.e., less time between recurring fires) on the winter range of the Nelchina Caribou Herd in eastern interior Alaska will result in large decreases of available winter habitat, relative to that currently available, in both the short and long-term. A 30% shortening of the fire frequency resulted in a 3.5-fold increase in the area burned annually and an associated 41% decrease in the amount of spruce-lichen forest found on the landscape. More importantly, simulations with more frequent fires produced a relatively immature forest age structure, compared to that which currently exists, with few stands older than 100 yr. This age structure is at the lower limits of stand age classes preferred by caribou from the Nelchina Herd. Projected changes in fire regime due to climate warming and/or additional prescribed burning could substantially alter the winter habitat of caribou in interior Alaska and lead to changes in winter range use and/or population dynamics.