the Alaska Harbor Observation Network installed monitoring equipment in
Kodiak's harbors. The equipment will provide valuable data to the Pier 3 wave
study and will establish an historical baseline that scientists can use in the
and maintaining coastal monitoring stations is not cheap. Currently the network
is represented only in Kodiak and Seward, but plans for expansion into Western Alaska will unfold over the next four months. The
network's Howard Ferren says that they're currently developing a curriculum
that will teach every day people how to use handheld instruments to monitor the
coast near their community.
-- (Network Expansion 1 :38 "If you can train people who
have vested interest in what's going on in their coastal areas, you can train
them about coastal processes from determining wave height and long shore drift
and beach sediment composition and how to take wind gust and wind speed measurements,
all of these types of parameters, data points and go online and log them in to
the database that is publicly available, then you can deploy a much larger
number of systems.")
observers will make up the Alaska Corp of Coastal Observers; a group that
Ferren says embodies a movement that is taking off around the nation: citizen
science. While it may be difficult to base a peer-reviewed scientific journal
article on citizen science, Ferren says it's not impossible.
-- (Network Expansion 2 :27 "It can be done but you
certainly have to have a rigorous training program and rigorous methodology and
very strict use of the data, otherwise it's just not going to pass scientific
muster. But a lot of general residents have an awfully lot of valuable
information to contribute to science.")
information is also valuable to communities experiencing coastal erosion.
Ferren says that the development of the corp is counter to what scientists did
for many years.
-- (Network Expansion 3 :38 "It's just sad that
historically local residents- those that don't have the scientific background-
weren't really invited to participate, but when you look at traditional and
local knowledge from people who've resided in an area for in some cases
thousands of years and have survived and you disregard the information you're
really doing that with great disrespect for the knowledge that people have
about their local environment.")
that the combination of traditional knowledge with new technology will greatly
expand what we know about Alaska's
coasts. The corp will work in cooperation with monitoring stations that will be
established in uninhabited areas. The data will be stored online and available
to the public.