Impacts of Environmental Change on Subsistence Land Use

My internship focuses on the creation of a weighted scale that ranks different types of environmental disturbances, both natural (i.e. wildfires) and anthropogenic (i.e. seismic activity), by the level of transformation they incur in arctic tundra ecosystems. Currently, there is a lack of a widely used ranking system to help understand which types of environmental disturbances in the arctic are most severe. This project will analyze existing data and literature to create a weighting system that evaluates the severity of environmental perturbations and the amount of time that each disturbance persists on the land. This will allow for the evaluation of environmental impacts in relation to one-another. This is of direct relevance to my partner organization, Kwusen, as Kwusen consults on a number of projects that encounter similar types of ecological disturbances in other regions of Canada. Therefore, my work has the potential to inform current and future research that Kwusen engages in.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Trevor Lantz

Student:

Will Tyson

Partner:

Kwusen Research & Media

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Management of companies and enterprises

University:

University of Victoria