GIS Predictive Modeling to Identify Archeological Vulnerability to Climate Change Along the Coasts of Western Arctic National Parklands in Alaska

Summary

A GIS-based predictive model helps guide archeological inventories and mitigation measures by identifying areas of archaeological interest subject to climate change threats. This multi-year large-scale inventory and vulnerability assessment of coastal archeological resources at Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument is designed to rectify the lack of basic inventory knowledge and complete a vulnerability assessment. The remote 1600 km-long coastal areas of the Western Arctic National Parklands in northwest Alaska are experiencing accelerated environmental changes such as rising sea levels, storm surges, thawing permafrost and erosion. Such changes adversely impact some of the most significant archaeological sites in North America. Loss of these resources is important not only because of damage directly to them, but also because information contained in these archeological records provides invaluable insight into the dynamics of how humans interacted with their environment and adapted to change across a broad timescale. We used a combination of archaeological and environmental spatial data to develop a regional predictive model, which was subsequently tested and refined by field work. This combination of field and desk based research resulted in a model that can be used to focus future archaeological research in this region and further afield.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Global Change Threats to the Archaeological and Paleoecological Record

Keywords

Spatial Coverage