Craig Gerlach

Craig Gerlach
University of Calgary · Department of Anthropology

About

44
Publications
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1,769
Citations

Publications

Publications (44)
Article
Full-text available
Indigenous knowledge provides valuable information on wildlife health and ecology, contributing to a broader understanding of the patterns and phenomena observed. Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus), an important species for the subsistence and culture of Inuit communities in the Arctic, are increasingly exposed to diverse stressors linked to rapid climate...
Article
Full-text available
There is an ongoing debate about the role of con­trolled environment agriculture and containerized food production in local food systems in Northern North American communities. Some critics dismiss these applications as ineffective, arguing that because they marginalize certain populations they do not have a place in northern food systems. However,...
Article
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The relationship between stability and change in social-ecological systems has received considerable attention in recent years, including the expectation that significant environmental changes will drive observable consequences for individuals, communities, and populations. Migration, as one example of response to adverse economic or environmental...
Article
Monitoring and surveillance of wildlife populations, including demographics and health, is often challenging, particularly in resource-constrained and remote settings. However, in areas characterized by subsistence oriented societies, the users of renewable resources hold a vast and holistic ecological knowledge about the natural environment. This...
Technical Report
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The Columbia Climate Center, in partnership with World Wildlife Fund, Woods Hole Research Center, and Arctic 21, held a workshop titled A 5 C Arctic in a 2 C World on July 20 and 21, 2016. The workshop was co-sponsored by the International Arctic Research Center (University of Alaska Fairbanks), the Arctic Institute of North America (Canada), the M...
Research
Full-text available
This document reports on a research project undertaken by faculty and students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the fall of 2011. We distributed a survey to 1500 randomly selected residents in the Kenai Peninsula region of Alaska, to determine the prevalence of food security, and to elicit the role of locally-caught seafood in household f...
Article
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Climate change is impacting coastal communities in rural Alaska in multiple direct and indirect ways. Here, findings are reported from ethnographic research done with municipal workers, community leaders, and other local experts in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, where it is found that climate change is interacting with local social and environme...
Article
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We draw on our research experiences with municipal workers in Alaska, where the impacts of climate change are already extensive, to examine adaptation and related concepts, such as resilience and vulnerability, which have become widely used in science and policy formulation for addressing climate change despite also being subject to multiple critiq...
Article
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Food security is a global societal challenge, and one geographic region where food insecurity is increasing is the North American Arctic and Subarctic. In this paper we synthesize research on food security in this region; important precursors and early work include reports on the impacts of land claims, the cumulative effects of industrial developm...
Article
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Using a mixed set of ethnographic methods including interviews and a structured survey, we evaluate local perceptions about the sustainability of salmon fisheries among fishers of the Cook Inlet region of Alaska. A majority of residents report participating in these fisheries, but we find significant disagreement about their sustainability. Househo...
Article
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Multiple climatic, environmental and socio-economic pressures have accumulated to the point where they interfere with the ability of remote rural Alaska Native communities to achieve food security with locally harvestable food resources. The harvest of wild foods has been the historical norm, but most Alaska Native villages are transitioning to a c...
Article
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In this commentary we describe a new framework for environmental security, one that draws food, water, and energy security into a unified socio-ecological research program. While traditional uses of environmental security carry statist and militaristic undertones, we propose that this "new" environmental security provides a more comprehensive persp...
Article
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In this paper we explore the relationship between food security and access to locally caught seafood for communities of the Kenai Peninsula region of Alaska. Seafood and fisheries are infrequently discussed in the literature on local and small-scale food movements; instead, they are more commonly construed as overexploited components of a global fo...
Article
Proceedings of the 15th International Congress on Circumpolar Health August 5-10, 2012, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. This extensive publication includes nearly 100 full length papers, 90 extended abstracts and nearly 100 short abstracts. The full publication is freely available through the journal website.
Article
Full-text available
By the terms set by international agreements for the conservation of Yukon River salmon, 2009 was a management success. It was a devastating year for many of the Alaska Native communities along the Yukon River, however, especially in up-river communities, where subsistence fishing was closed in order to meet international conservation goals for Chi...
Article
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For over a century, various forms of crop cultivation, including family, community, and school gardens were a component of the foodways of many Alaska Native communities. This paper describes the history of these cropping practices in Athabascan communities of the Tanana and Yukon Flats regions of Alaska, and reveals a distinct agricultural traditi...
Article
A common premise of science for conservation and sustainability is an assumption that despite any human definitions of value, there are ecological first principles, e.g., resilience, which must be understood if sustainability is to be possible. As I show here, however, pursuits such as restoration, conservation, and sustainability remain tangled in...
Article
2009 was a particularly devastating year for rural communities of the Yukon River in Alaska. For a number of reasons, including annual variability in Chinook and Chum salmon runs, imperfect monitoring and information, ``best practices'' management decisions by regulatory agencies, and international treaty obligations related to conservation and tot...
Article
Multiple climatic and socioeconomic drivers have come in recent years to interfere with the ability of Alaska's ‘bush’ communities to achieve food security with locally available food resources. Livelihoods traditionally centered on the harvest of wild, country foods, are transitioning to a cash economy, with increasing reliance on industrially pro...
Article
Human system changes tied to the loss of sea ice and other arctic changes are have been observed across the entire range of human activities both in the arctic and elsewhere. The specific nature of a particular impact may be understood within a framework organizing human systems along three dimensions: time, space, and category. Three temporal scal...
Article
The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP; www.uaf.edu/accap) is one of several, NOAA funded, Regional Integrated Science and Policy (RISA) programs nation-wide (http://www.climate.noaa.gov/cpo_pa/risa/). Our mission is to assess the socio-economic and biophysical impacts of climate variability in Alaska, make this information avai...
Article
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Many wide-ranging mammal species have experienced significant declines over the last 200 years; restoring these species will require long-term, large-scale recovery efforts. We highlight 5 attributes of a recent range-wide vision-setting exercise for ecological recovery of the North American bison (Bison bison) that are broadly applicable to other...
Article
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Computational thinking (CT) is a way to solve problems and understand complex systems that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science and is well suited to the challenges that face researchers of complex, linked social-ecological systems. This paper explores CT’s usefulness to sustainability science through the application of the services-or...
Article
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In the Arctic, permafrost extends up to 500 m below the ground surface, and it is generally just the top metre that thaws in summer. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands on the arctic landscape are normally not connected with groundwater in the same way that they are in temperate regions. When the surface is frozen in winter, only lakes deeper than 2 m and...
Article
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Human activities in the Arctic are often mentioned as recipients of climate-change impacts. In this paper we consider the more complicated but more likely possibility that human activities themselves can interact with climate or environmental change in ways that either mitigate or exacerbate the human impacts. Although human activities in the Arcti...
Article
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Over the past ten years, total mercury (THg) levels have been surveyed in Alaskan wildlife and fish as part of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment (AMAP). Beyond these studies there is little historical data on THg levels in important subsistence species for people in Alaska. A survey of THg in caribou hair from archaeological deposits would provi...
Article
In forensics and archaeology, it is important to distinguish human from animal remains and to identify animal species from fragmentary bones and bloodstains. We report blind tests in which a protein radioimmunoassay (pRIA) was used to identify the species of six bone fragments lacking morphological specificity and 43 bloodstained lithic tools, knap...
Article
Blood and protein residue identification in archaeological research has been a controversial subject for the last 20 years. This paper reports on the use of an improved protein radioimmunoassay (pRIA) technique in identifying protein residues. Results from the blind testing of the original and improved pRIA techniques in identifying bloodstains on...
Article
Full-text available
The Arctic system is moving toward a new state that falls outside the envelope of glacialinterglacial fluctuations that prevailed during recent Earth history This future Arctic is likely to have dramatically less permanent ice than exists at present At the present rate of change, a summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century is a real possibil...
Article
Reindeer, as terrestrial herbivores, generally have low levels of Hg, but monitoring Hg levels can help in understanding ecological toxicity related to a changing environment. In this study, Alaskan reindeer were analyzed for total mercury (THg) in their hair. Both free-ranging reindeer from the Seward Peninsula, Alaska and reindeer fed a pollock-b...
Article
An assumption exists in North Alaskan archaeological literature that radiometric assays produced by the now- defunct Dicarb Radioisotope Co. (Dicarb) are "too young" or more recent when compared to those produced by other labo- ratories. This assumption is statistically tested by comparing radiocarbon assays produced by Dicarb to those produced by...
Article
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The course of human prehistory in the western American Arctic is often argued to have been controlled by climatic fluctuations, yet the climatic data used are extra-regional. Reanalysis of the Iyatayet and Onion Portage stratigraphy, northwest Alaska beach ridges, and tree rings reveals several climatic "down-turns' or stormy, colder periods at: 33...
Article
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This study presents data and a method for reliably predicting bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) length using one length and one width measurement of the scapula. The bowhead scapula preserves well and is common in coastal arctic archaeological sites. The length measurement is taken as the maximum straight-line,measurement along the axis, excluding the s...
Article
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The cultural chronology of Northwest Alaska and Chukotka is uncertain. Some 127 radiocarbon dates from the unpublished and published literature are calibrated and reported in this study. The study area extends from north of Norton Sound in Alaska to the Kolyma River in Chukotka on the west, and to the Mackenzie River in Canada on the east. Without...
Article
Study done to evaluate factors influencing Black dropouts. Results indicate that, most often, Black dropouts are students with higher intelligence but lower educational aspiration and motivation then Black students remaining in school. Tables included. (Author/JLF)
Article
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 1989. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 415-457). Vita. Photocopy. s

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