This project takes a co-production of knowledge approach to advance understandings of Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) impacts on Alaska Native communities and develop new directions for HAB-impact research, monitoring, and mitigation across coastal Alaska.
Why We Care
Across coastal Alaska, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) threaten food security and sovereignty as the toxins they produce penetrate the marine food web that Alaska Native communities depend on. Understanding HAB impacts through Indigenous perspectives and frameworks like food security and food sovereignty can help enhance awareness of social, ecological, and cultural interconnections and reveal the cumulative impacts of HABs to communities. Since coastal Alaska Native communities encompass various cultures, diets, geographies and experiences, it is important to consider how differences influence local HAB impacts and identify shared impacts that can be addressed across regions.
What We Are Doing
This project takes a co-production of knowledge approach to understanding the impacts of HABs to coastal and Alaska Native communities by combining Traditional Knowledge and western science to enhance collective knowledge about HAB impacts.
The objectives of the project are to:
- Examine how HABs affect subsistence harvest behaviors at household and community levels.
- Convene and consult an expert panel composed primarily of community marine resource experts, including Indigenous leadership, to provide guidance on project priorities.
- Engage expert panel members, community representatives, HAB researchers, and agencies in a workshop to co-produce knowledge about HAB impacts and develop an Impact Assessment Framework.
- Implement and evaluate the co-produced Impact Assessment Framework through community monitoring and mitigation strategies.
Benefits of Our Work
This work cultivates a Tribally driven, cross-regional network and develops actionable tools that center Indigenous perspectives in research, assessment, monitoring, and management of HABs’ social and cultural impacts in coastal Alaska.
This project is led by Taylor Stinchcomb at the Wildlife Conservation Society Arctic-Beringia Program, in collaboration with Ryan Bellmore at the U.S. Forest Service, Lauren Divine and Nicholas Parlato at the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Ecosystem Conservation Office and John Harley at the University of Alaska Southeast and is funded by the NCCOS Social, Cultural, and Economic Assessment of Harmful Algal Blooms (SEAHAB) Program.