Using an Equitable Co-Production Framework for Integrating Meaningful Community Engagement and Science to Understand Climate Impacts
Through this research, their goal is to better understand potential future impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities in central and northern Alaska and the Yukon Territory in Canada. To achieve this goal, the project team formed an Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) and together developed guidelines for how we can work collaboratively with Indigenous communities. The process of forming an IAC and related guidelines is a new way to approach collaborative research when working across a large geographic area. The paper is led by USGS social scientist Nicole Herman-Mercer and co-authored by Indigenous leaders and the interdisciplinary project team. Together, they present their research process so that it may provide an example for other scientific efforts.
Now in its fourth year, the Arctic Rivers Project has provided support and research opportunity for over 10 undergraduate researchers, one Ph.D. student (Dylan Blaskey, Civil Engineering), and one postdoctoral fellow (Dr. Peyton Thomas, INSTAAR).
Link to the paper: