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Drought and Extreme Events: Building collaborations to enhance data, decision making, and adaptation planning in Southeast Alaska
March 30, 2022–March 31, 2022
9:00 am – 3:30 pm each day
This will be a hybrid event, held in person and online
Register now • Workshop agenda (PDF)
Drought and Extreme Events
Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest that has been experiencing extreme heat and periods of prolonged drought. Dry conditions and extreme drought have had economic impacts and created warming low oxygen environments for salmon which are important for subsistence and commercial economies. In May 2019 a drought workshop for Southeast Alaska was held to refine drought categories for the region, increase awareness of the National Drought Monitor and drought-impacts reporting, and begin to highlight available information and resources to assist with adapting to drought. However, since 2019 drought conditions have ceased and Southeast Alaska has experienced extreme wind, rain, and snow events that have had profound societal impacts.
Workshop Format
This workshop will continue what was learned from the May 2019 workshop on drought, but also address extreme events through efforts by agencies, academic researchers, tribes, and others to assess the potential impacts of both drought and extreme events on both the natural and built environments. This includes new monitoring efforts by scientists in Southeast Alaska.
The goal of this workshop is to build on this momentum and assist with the development of community-driven adaptation strategies to serve the specific needs, challenges, and opportunities of remote, temperate rainforest communities. A secondary objective will review recent research projects, and a third will assess recent decision support tools for communities, land managers, and others for use in adaptation planning.
Outcomes
Participants will coproduce drought adaptation strategies to meet the specific and vast needs of Southeast Alaska. By bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders in Southeast Alaska to develop adaptation strategies, we will be able to harness the diversity of thought, knowledge, and experience to develop strategies that will have local applicability and support; and thus, will be more likely to succeed across the broader region.
This workshop is free. Lunch will be served for those in attendance from 12–1 pm each day.
Limited travel funding is available for stakeholders located outside Juneau to present and participate.
Contact Davin Holen if you require travel support.
The planning team for this event includes:
Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy; Alaska EPSCoR, University of Alaska Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Southeast; Alaska Sea Grant; USDA Northwest Climate Hub; National Weather Service; The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes; and Northern Latitudes Partnership.
Photo by Jeremy Bynum