Indigenous Knowledge - Providing Insight into Climate Change

Indigenous Knowledge can provide insights into past conditions and uncover ecosystem level relationships among plants, animals, and humans that can help scientists better understand climate impacts on humans and the environment and identify sustainable pathways for climate adaptation. Including Indigenous Knowledge in USGS science must be done in a respectful, equitable, and reciprocal way guided by Indigenous leadership and oversight. Watch Nicole Herman-Mercer, a research social scientist with the USGS Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and advisor to the DOI Indigenous Knowledges Coordination Committee, as she discusses the Arctic Rivers Project as an example of a research project which includes Indigenous Knowledge to improve understanding of ongoing and possible future climate changes in Northern regions.

This talk focuses on the approaches of the Arctic Rivers Project to increase collective understanding of the impacts of climate change on rivers, fish, and Indigenous communities across Alaska and the Yukon River basin with Indigenous leadership and guidance. Through engagement with Indigenous communities, the results of climate and river models are being combined with community-level perspectives, experiences, and knowledge to craft storylines of Arctic change and community resilience. This approach seeks to make quantitative modeling results of potential future conditions more tangible and applicable to community-level adaptation planning.