Update: PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO THE COVID-19 WAVE, THE SUMMIT IS BEING POSTPONED. Please check the Arctic Rivers Summit website for updates as the organizers work on rescheduling the summit.
The Arctic Rivers Summit will be an in-person workshop to discuss the current and potential future states of Alaskan and Yukon rivers and fish and how we can adapt. The Summit will bring together up to 150 Tribal and First Nation leaders, community members, managers, and knowledge holders, western scientists, federal, state, and provincial agency representatives, academic partners, non-governmental organizations, and others. The Summit is being held as part of a five-year Arctic Rivers Project funded by the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic Program.
The Arctic Rivers Project is co-led by the University of Colorado-Boulder and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and both the project and Summit are guided by an Indigenous Advisory Council. Additional project partners include the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Waterloo, and the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. The project began on January 1, 2020, and runs through December 31, 2024. The project seeks to weave together Indigenous Knowledge, climate, river, and fish modeling, and monitoring data to develop Narratives of Change across the Arctic landscape to support resource and community adaptation.
The three-day Summit will take place at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. A variety of COVID-19 precautionary policies will be in effect including a vaccine requirement to attend. The organizers will continue to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic situation and will adjust plans for the Summit to prioritize the safety of our Elders and Summit participants.
The Summit has three main goals:
- Exchange knowledge about current and potential future conditions for Alaskan and Yukon rivers, fish, and people and ways we can adapt.
- Inform the Arctic Rivers Project modeling of climate, river flows, river ice, and fish to make data generated as useful as possible for communities.
- Develop an action plan centered around the: (1) Status of Salmon, (2) Status of Rivers, (3) Partnering Indigenous Knowledge with Western Science to Inform Management, (4) Youth and Elders: Building a Bridge of Traditional Knowledge.