Navigating the New Arctic (NNA): Co-production of shorefast ice knowledge in Uummannaq Bay, Greenland

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

Shorefast ice (also known as landfast ice) is sea-ice that is attached to the coastline. Since it does not drift with the winds and currents, shorefast ice forms an important habitat for wildlife and a platform for human subsistence food production and transport in the Arctic. As the climate warms, residents local to the Arctic report that it is breaking up earlier in the year and is thinner than it was a few decades ago. These environmental changes threaten the sustainability of wildlife and traditional human activities that depend on shorefast ice. Despite its significance, a comprehensive multidisciplinary assessment of shorefast ice has yet to be made in Greenland. This project therefore seeks to understand how shorefast ice has responded to atmospheric and oceanic warming, and how these changes have affected livelihoods in communities local to the Uummannaq region of West Greenland. The results will improve institutional knowledge of environmental change in the Arctic and prediction of its associated impacts, as well as strengthen US relations in an area of, potentially global, strategic and economic importance. The project will co-produce shorefast ice knowledge by leveraging large satellite remote sensing datasets, community-based monitoring and local and Indigenous knowledge. First, observations from high-resolution optical satellite sensors will be supplemented with knowledge gathered from local residents. A community-based monitoring program will then be initiated using small multi-rotor UAVs to document key shorefast ice processes (e.g. formation and break-up) as they happen. The quantitative and qualitative shorefast ice knowledge generated by these two activities will be used to understand not only how the shorefast ice has changed but how these changes matter to individuals and communities in the Uummannaq region. The involvement of residents and institutions in Uummannaq at all stages of the project, in combination with ongoing observations, will lay the foundations for ongoing community support and enable new insights into the complex social, cultural and economic changes caused by rapid environmental change. The findings will also enhance the ability of local residents and institutions to make informed and embedded choices concerning natural resource governance and management, as well as choices about individual and collective trajectories towards a desirable and sustainable future. This award is cofunded by the Office of International Science & Engineering. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.