Funded by the North Pacific Research Board, the Northern Alaska Sea Ice Project Jukebox examines the complex interrelationship between people and their environment as it relates to nearshore and shorefast sea ice and humans having to continually adapt responses to changes in ice conditions. Also addressed is how climate change is affecting the ecosystems, which in turn affect the local people. The project tells the story of the changing Arctic through those who live within it daily.
Project Jukebox learned last week that their second funding proposal to the North Pacific Research Board had been accepted and with these new funds they will be conducting more interviews in 2015. Building upon the current Northern Alaska Sea Ice Project Jukebox, researchers can listen to recordings made in 1978, 2008, 2009, and 2013 with local experts in Barrow and other northern Alaska communities talking about their local traditional knowledge about and observations of changing sea ice.
Conducting interviews in 2015 in Barrow will provide continuity in documentation of changing nearshore sea ice conditions and of “unusual” years. This expanding record is useful to researchers trying to understand the ice environment as well as social scientists studying human adaptation, decision making, and risk taking behavior. Conducting similar interviews in Kotzebue will begin documentation of traditional knowledge of nearshore and shorefast sea ice there. This will serve as both a comparative dataset for a location with vastly different ice conditions than Barrow, and as the start of another longitudinal research plan in that area.