NIK Yukon to Yakutia

Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, Anchorage AK

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a small workshop to be held in Zhaigansk, Sakha Republic, Russia, in August 2014 as part of the Network or Indigenous Knowledge (NIK). NIK is a project by the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council that is building a global network of watershed users, managers, scientists, community scholars and knowledge holders on the Yukon in both Alaska and Canada, the Amazon, and the Nile. This workshop would introduce NIK to the Yakut and Evenk people of Siberia in order to bring the Lena River Basin, one of the 3 rivers in Siberia that contributes fresh water to the Arctic Ocean and is the largest river whose watershed is entirely in Russia. The Lena River It is the 11th longest river in the world and has the 9th largest watershed that provides fresh water to the Arctic Ocean. NIK scientists are providing a mechanism by which global watersheds can be monitored year round by local people, something not possible by field scientists, most who can only visit their research sites in the summer season for a few weeks. NIK will train local people in scientific methodologies for monitoring the health and production of the Lena River Watershed. Local monitoring will provide data on the health and production of one of the worlds largest watersheds, information critical to understanding the Arctic Ocean ecosystem and how it is changing.