Yukon Kuskokwim Nushagak science

Read the entire story

• http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/us/16album.html

During the cold war, the battle line was drawn right here on the North Slope, with the Soviets skulking just across the Bering Strait. Most Alaska Guard members stayed in the state, protecting the home front.

But the world has changed. For this war, 670 Guard members have been called up from rural Alaska, its largest foreign deployment ever. The Alaska Guard estimates that one-third of its members are Eskimo, so most likely a third of those deployed are indigenous men, officials say, though the military does not keep official racial records of this type.

• more on Iraq effects - http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=207

• What impact will Iraq war call-up have - http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=203

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Eskimo, National+Guard, war, subsistence
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I mentioned this earlier

• Where is… Bethel water? - http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=277

but here is a release of information from a different source. I can’t yet find the photos.

In the meantime, here are illustrations from the Kuskokwim Delta (click on the images to go to where you can see larger sizes.)

2005

2006

2002

2006

• Where is… 1978 mouth of Kuskokwim River -
  http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=230

• Where is Y-K Alaska (NASA) -
  http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=35

• Where is Y-K Alaska (Google map) -
  http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/?p=36

• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-10/uoaf-sps101206.php

Shrinking ponds signal warmer, dryer Alaska
50 years of remotely sensed images show dramatic change

FAIRBANKS, Alaska–A first-of-its kind analysis of fifty years of remotely sensed imagery from the 1950s to 2002 shows a dramatic reduction in the size and number of more than 10,000 ponds in Alaska. The analysis, by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists and published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research, indicates that these landscape-level changes in arctic ponds are associated with recent climate warming in Alaska and may have profound effects on climate and wildlife.

Over the past 50 years, Alaska has experienced a warming climate with longer growing seasons, increased permafrost thawing, an increase in water loss due to evaporation from open water and transpiration from vegetation, and yet no substantial change in precipitation.

The shrinking of these closed-basin ponds may be indicative of widespread lowering of the water table throughout low-lying landscapes in Interior Alaska, write the authors. A lowered water table negatively affects the ability of wetlands to regulate climate because it enhances the release of carbon dioxide by exposing soil carbon to aerobic decomposition.

“Alaska is important in terms of waterfowl production and if you have a lowering of the water table that could have a potentially huge impact on waterfowl production,” …

“No one has done a state water-body inventory of this magnitude,”said Brian Riordan, lead author and data manager for the Bonanza CreekLong-Term Ecological Research program at UAF. “It will allow landmanagers to stop speculating about possible water body loss and begin to address the implications of this loss.”

Using black and white aerial photographs from the 1950s, color infrared aerial photographs from 1978-1982, and digital images from the Landsat satellite from 1999-2002, Riordan outlined each pond by hand. …

The main study area was the subarctic boreal region of Interior Alaska, which spans more than 5 million square kilometers bounded on the north by the Brooks Range and on the south by the Alaska Range. To contrast the semi-arid, subarctic sites of discontinuous permafrost in Interior Alaska, the authors also selected a study area in the Arctic Coastal Plain where the temperatures are much colder, the growing season much shorter, and the permafrost is continuous, and a more maritime site south of the Alaska Range.

All ponds in the study regions in subarctic Alaska showed a reduction in area of between 4 and 31 percent, with most of the change occurring since the 1970s. The ponds in the Arctic Coastal Plain showed negligible change….

Blogged with Flock

but Flock has problems with multiple posts while claiming errors. I had to tidy up by hand.

Technorati Tags: global+warming, tundra, permafrost, drought, wetlands, UAF, Alaska
Site Search Tags: global+warming, tundra, permafrost, drought, wetlands, UAF, Alaska

Science 25 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5790, pp. 1088 - 1090
DOI: 10.1126/science.313.5790.1088

• http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5790/1088

Desalination Freshens Up, by Robert F. Service
Efforts to provide clean, fresh water for the world’s inhabitants seem to be moving in the wrong direction. According to the World Health Organization, 1 billion people do not have access to clean, piped water. A World Resources Institute analysis adds that 2.3 billion people–41% of Earth’s population–live in water-stressed areas, a number expected to climb to 3.5 billion by 2025. To make matters worse, global population is rising by 80 million a year, and with it the demand for new sources of fresh water.

missing freshwater

The Yukon-Kuskowkim Rivers Delta, in the Bethel area, is a semi-arid region with generally 15 inches or less of precipitation per year. When last I checked, Bethel has about as much precipitation as Los Alamos, New Mexico in the high “desert”, including snow (54 inches).

The Kuskokwim Delta is aggrading (sinking or eroding away) instead of accreting (gaining sediment and area) as is the Yukon Delta. Unfortunately, I cannot find on-line the specific data and reports for the accretion or degrading status, nor analyses of possible causes. (If a reader knows this, please let the rest of us know.)

For at least a decade, the tundra ponds on the Kuskowkim delta have been disappearing—

• they may be sinking (the permafrost holding them up may be disappearing. Last year nearby ponds look like a bathtub with the plug pulled)
• the land may be rising (but we haven’t had the weight of glaciers above us in the past)
• the pattern of precipitation may have changed (more occurs in warmer months which may result in more evaporation)
• the amount of precipitation may have decreased
• people use much more water (especially on piped systems)
• there are many more people using water
• sea level may be changing (fresh water floats on top of salt water)

No matter the cause, we do not seem to have now, and will likely not have for the next generation, sufficient water clean enough for essential uses.

2005 American Community Survey (ACS) data are now being released. The 2005 ACS data include demographic and social information such as race, Hispanic origin, age, education, marital status, grandparents as caregivers, veterans, disability status and U.S. citizenship. The data is available for nearly 7,000 areas, including all congressional districts and counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska native areas of 65,000 population or more.

http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en

reference from BHIC

http://library.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/ archives/cat_websites.html#001737

A project funded by the NSF Arctic Social Sciences program entitled White Plague: A Historical Ethnography of Tuberculosis Among Yup’ik Peoples of Southwestern Alaska examines the social effects of tuberculosis (TB). This disease was endemic in the Alaska Native population during the 19th century. Due to increasingly sustained contact with outsiders, by the mid 20th century it had reached epidemic proportions, devastating many rural communities. In the 1930s, one out of three Alaska Natives died of TB. In southwestern Alaska, Yup’ik people had one of the highest reported incidence and prevalence rates in the world. By the 1950s, it was estimated that one out of every thirty indigenous Alaskans was in a tuberculosis sanatorium, most located outside of Alaska in the Seattle/Tacoma area, remaining there for two or more years….

By the mid 1950s, a massive public health campaign against TB in Alaska was well underway, and within two decades dramatic improvement occurred in both morbidity and mortality rates with the introduction of intensive control efforts, including chemotherapy, quarantine measures, and surveillance. By the 1970s, tuberculosis was no longer the primary cause of death among Alaska Natives The ways indigenous people responded in their everyday lives to the desolate circumstances and public health interventions have largely gone unexplored. Linda Green, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, leads the Alaska-based research team collecting oral histories from community members in three villages — Hooper Bay, Chevak, and Nunapichuk — in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and interviewing public health and medical practitioners who provided services to those with TB….

After data analysis is complete, Green will write a historical ethnography focusing on how processes of modernity — specifically, changing public health and medical policies and practices — influenced a reworking of Alaska Native identity, social relations, and social organization.

For more information, contact Linda Green (lbgreen AT email DOT arizona.edu; 520-621-6291).

Witness the Arctic: Chronicles of the NSF Arctic Sciences Program Spring 2006, Volume 12 Number 1, page 4, is published biannually by ARCUS

http://www.arcus.org

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Seattle
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printed in the Anchorage Daily News which I don’t think intended this to be satire.

http://www.adn.com/life/health/birdflu/story/7939198p-7832627c.html

By MARY PEMBERTON, The Associated Press
Published: July 7, 2006

Alaska is taking an aggressive stance against a possible outbreak of deadly bird flu in humans by placing its order early for medicines intended to slow the spread of a pandemic.

State officials will eventually order enough antiviral doses to cover about a fourth of Alaska residents.

Officials are being bold because the state is a crossroads for migratory birds, which could be carrying the virus here from other parts of the world….

“If we get to 2007, we will be on our road of having a reasonable supply,” Mandsager said….

State health officials this summer will come up with a map for distributing the drugs quickly if there is an outbreak. The plan calls for moving some of the antivirals from Anchorage to cities and towns such as Bethel, Nome and Kotzebue, and eventually to the villages.

“It won’t do any good to have the medicine if we don’t have a distribution plan,” Mandsager said…. emphasis added

With regard to antivirals as effective agents against an H5N1 human pandemic—see discussions here:

from EffectMeasure [It’s not the plan, it’s the planning. - http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/04/14/ its-not-the-plan-its-the-planning/]
“But an important issue raised by the IAFF (echoed by health care workers) is policy around prophylaxis of essential workers.”
http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/ 2006/04/firefighters-and-bird-flu.html

Bird Flu: Communicating the Risk, Sandman & Lanard - http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/03/21/h5n1-risk-sandman/

Previous post — What impact will Iraq war call-up have
http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/06/27/ what-impact-will-iraq-war-call-up-have/

Jody has a nice quiet story this morning about a disquieting deployment into the Iraq war.

Alaska Communities Struggle with National Guard Deployments

Listen to this story… by Jody Seitz

Morning Edition, July 4, 2006 · National Guard deployments to Iraq are drawing on a unique population of older Guard members in Alaska. The absence of these men from their communities poses distinct challenges to families already stressed by the high price of energy, the lack of jobs and, in some communities, the loss of municipal services. Jody Seitz of member station KDLG reports.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5532219

Other NPR (National Public Radio) stories can be found here

http://tinyurl.com/gz3jh

Site Search Tags: Iraq, Guard, war

http://tinyurl.com/ggg9o

Eskimo Troops Brace for Iraq
Alaskan Guard units are called up for the first time in decades. Villages worry about losing men.
By Sam Howe Verhovek, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 5, 2006
KONGIGANAK, Alaska

….In this village of 386 people, six men have been notified to report for duty next month. ..The call-up in the marshy delta country to the west reaches villages so remote that there are only two ways to get here most of the year — by airplane or snowmobile — and a third from May to September, or perhaps October in a warm year with a late freeze-up: the river.

So in places with Eskimo names such as Kongiganak, Kwigillingok and Manokotak, elder leaders and wives find themselves planning how to carry on without strong young men who serve as vital providers of food….

===========================================
I did some calculations to see what numerical impact (and ultimately biocultural impact) the call-up will have.
Read the rest of this entry »

Reference Number: DSW2201, Year of Publication: 2006
Authors: Gruenewald, Paul; Wood, Darryl
Keywords: Alcohol Regulation, Injury, Native Americans

Citation: Wood, D.S. and Gruenewald, P.J. “Local alcohol prohibition, police presence and serious injury in isolated Alaska Native villages,” Addiction, 101(3):393-403, March 2006.

Abstract:

Aims: To consider the effects of alcohol prohibition and police presence upon serious injury in isolated Alaska Native villages.

Design: We compared rates of injury attributed to assault, self-harm, motor vehicle collisions and ‘other causes’ between villages with or without local prohibition and between villages with or without local police. Negative binomial regression was used to assess the relative effects of prohibition and police presence upon serious injury rates net of potential confounders.

Read the rest of this entry »