Abstract
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.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Richard A. Mitchells, Jr. for his referrals to and discussions with water and wastewater experts; Greg V. Jones and Jon Hermon for their expert advice on issues with water and wastewater treatment systems in Alaska; Nancy Fresco for her valuable comments about all indicators, but particularly about precipitation; and Christine Brummer for the GIS calculations used in some indicators. We would also like to thank Frank Witmer for his analysis of surface water and surface water change. The National Science Foundation is acknowledged for funding the research and fieldwork that supported this work through awards ARC 0755966, BCS 1142549, SES-1639524, and PLR 1642847.
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Kliskey, A., Williams, P., Abatzoglou, J.T. et al. Enhancing a community-based water resource tool for assessing environmental change: the arctic water resources vulnerability index revisited. Environ Syst Decis 39, 183–197 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-018-9712-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-018-9712-7