Paula Williams

Forgetting Freshwater: Technology, Values, and Distancing in Remote Arctic Communities

Technology is often touted as a collective solution to environmental problems. However, what if technology results in trade-offs in long-term resilience that ultimately pose a critical vulnerability for society? In this study, we examine the change in values of freshwater from traditional to convenience-oriented values in remote, resource-dependent communities that are in the process of modernization. Individuals living in remote resource-dependent communities in Alaska were interviewed and asked a series of questions concerning their values toward freshwater and the importance of those values. As age of the individual decreased, traditional-subsistence values of water diminished, and both convenience and recreational values of water increased. Individuals from communities without municipal water systems expressed greater traditional-subsistence values and less convenience-oriented values than individuals from communities with municipal water systems. The data presented suggest that as communities increasingly adopt the dominant social paradigm associated with Western cultures, their values of freshwater change from traditional and cultural values to convenience and recreational values. The implications of this transformation in values are discussed as a form of technology-induced environmental distancing.

The distancing effect of modernization on the perception of water resources in Arctic communities

Abstract This paper provides empirical evidence to suggest that modernization, and its resulting infrastructure, creates a filter which distances people from the resources they use. The data presented suggest that installation of a municipal water supply, piped water to residences, affects a communitys ability to perceive change in surrounding water sources. Since individual perceptions and values are instrumental in determining whether or not change merits response, failing to perceive change threatens a communitys ability to note and respond to variations in critical natural resources. A conceptual model for the effect of distancing from a resource is proposed.

Community-based observing networks and systems in the Arctic: Human perceptions of environmental change and instrument-derived data

Many papers have addressed the differing approaches to observation by scientists collecting instrumented data and by community or local knowledge-based observations. Integrating these ways of knowing is difficult because they operate at different scales and have different goals. It would benefit both scientists and communities to integrate community-based observations and instrumented data, despite obstacles, because it would expand scales of observation and because gauged data in the Arctic are sparse. This requires development of a protocol to integrate these knowledge systems to maximize reliability and validity. We used survey data from a community-based observing network in the Bering Sea and examined the correspondence of community-based observations with instrument-derived data for air temperature, sea ice break-up and freeze-up, and vegetation changes. Results highlight that there is a high correspondence between community-based observations for sea ice and vegetation change and instrumented data, but there is an inherent conflict in scales of observation for air temperature data. This helps to elucidate the benefits of community-based observing as a process for understanding and responding to change in the Arctic.

From Green to Sustainability—Trends in the Assessment Methods of Green Buildings

This research investigates recent developments in assessment methods of green buildings and compares the differences in rating systems among the United Kingdom, USA, and Germany. There are indications that the rating systems are moving from green buildings to sustainable buildings. In order to understand the recent research in academic areas, we survey the recent Ph.D. dissertations and literature related to green building assessment. Discussion is provided on the major research areas of green buildings, which cover accountability of life cycle cost, methodology for balancing the three pillars, and government vision and public policy.

Enhancing a community-based water resource tool for assessing environmental change: the arctic water resources vulnerability index revisited

People in the Arctic and sub-Arctic continue to face uncertainty in their livelihoods as they contend with environmental variability and change operating at multiple scales. The arctic water resources vulnerability index (AWRVI) was proposed as a tool that arctic communities could use to assess their susceptibility to both changing biophysical conditions affecting their water resources and socioeconomic conditions measuring their ability to respond to such changes. The application of AWRVI in six communities in Northwest Alaska and one in Southcentral Alaska is explored with a view to enhancing the tool as an adaptive capacity index, and a set of AWRVI indicators and parameters was refined by modifying the suite of biophysical measures and societal capacities to enhance the ability of the tool to gauge community adaptive capacity, and incorporate the use of more diverse datasets. A critical update was the development of an indicator for change in timing of precipitation in response to advice from Alaskan practitioners and scientists. Index scores based on the updated AWRVI are compared with the original AWRVI for the seven communities and show small to modest changes in the adaptive capacity scores. The role of the updated AWRVI is discussed as a tool to assist communities as they attempt to understand, negotiate, and reconcile adaptation measures for environmental change at local scales, potentially providing a guide for communities to target adaptive responses.

An integrated dataset for stakeholder perceptions of environmental change and instrumented measures of change

An integrated dataset was developed that combined stakeholder perceptions of environmental change (precipitation, air temperature, water temperature, fish abundance, fish size, residential development) and comparable instrumented measures of environmental changes based on sensor records. All data were transformed to a common 3-point categorical scale to support statistical comparison of social and biophysical change for the same change variables. The integrated dataset is available on Mendeley (http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/cjfxg84bmx.1).