Managing Alaska’s National Parklands as Resilient Social-Ecological Systems

• Kim Jochum, Resources Manager, Alaska Region, National Park Service
• Sahara Iverson, Master’s Student, Alaska Human Dimensions of Wildlife Lab, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Caitlin Luby, Master’s Student, Alaska Human Dimensions of Wildlife Lab, University of Alaska Fairbanks

About this issue of Alaska Park Science

The articles in this issue explore dynamic challenges and emerging opportunities for management to ensure that the National Park Service mission is met and visitors have high-quality experiences in Alaska’s national parks. Management decisions are often a result of finding compromises or the best possible outcome based on values as much as science. Because of that, articles in this issue may be presented from a particular perspective or express opinions. Those opinions are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the National Park Service.

The Agashashok River in Noatak National Preserve, one of the many park landscapes communities depend on.

University of Alaska Fairbanks/Caitlin Luby

The goal of this article is to lay out how the integration of the scientifically developed concept of social-ecological systems does apply to, and how it could further be developed, in land management agencies. To do so, we put the history and development of social-ecological systems (SES) and resilience theories into perspective within the National Park Service (NPS) parklands management in Alaska. Two co-authors are currently working on specifically funded projects to address the integration of social and ecological datasets to develop approaches that inform management decision making on the ground. Many amazing projects are ongoing throughout the Alaska region in land management agencies working closely with local communities, such as oral history interviews of Elders to preserve their knowledge for the future, or developing hands-on university classes teaching salmon eDNA collection in the community. This work is crucial as well for management success. However, in this article we specifically want to highlight identified scientific theories and how the integration of those can lead to improved management decision making.

We pose that Alaska national parklands are examples of social-ecological systems. SES have been defined as: complex, integrated systems in which humans are part of nature (Berkes and Folke 1998: 414-436), and system(s) with interacting and interdependent physical, biological, and social components, emphasizing the “humans in nature” perspective (Chapin et al. 2009: 351). The SES concept is predated by earlier research on human ecosystems as an organizing concept, already identifying the future challenges we were to face if not considering humans in ecosystem management (Machlis et al. 1997).

There are opportunities to rethink how we approach the management of Alaska national parklands. Specifically, it is crucial to manage NPS parklands for changes in resources, conditions, and human impacts and needs, compared to our current approach to managing resources while they are changing. These are different mindsets. The first approach is proactive and includes the idea of constant change in our planning documents and strategies. Although sometimes integrated on a local level, we lack the inclusion of interactions and feedback between the social and ecological components of a system, its resilience, as well as the identification of barriers and, specifically, thresholds to system function in our current management approaches.

A broader argument has been made that all systems encompassing the use of natural resources by human societies, no matter their location or management objectives, should be managed as SES (Ostrom 2009). Here, we focus on Alaska’s national parklands because of the extent to which Alaska is different from contemporary NPS management in most non-Alaska parklands and from federal land management objectives generally. A large difference in their management objective is that most Alaska’s parklands are tasked to ensure the continuation of subsistence uses and allow for a rural preference under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) for communities and individuals who have customarily and traditionally used these lands for subsistence purposes (Title 8 of ANILCA). ANILCA (Title 8, §803) defines the term subsistence uses as:

the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild, renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption as food, shelter, fuel, clothing, tools, or transportation; for the making and selling of handicraft articles out of nonedible byproducts of fish and wildlife resources taken for personal or family consumption; for barter, or sharing for personal or family consumption; and for customary trade.

In Alaska, the NPS manages 15 park units (Figure 1), of which federal subsistence regulations apply in 12, including Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Denali National Park (portions) and Preserve, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Glacier Bay National Preserve, Katmai National Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Noatak National Preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve (Title 2 of ANILCA).

Figure 1. Overview of Alaska NPS parklands and where subsistence use is permitted or prohibited. Two examples will be highlighted in this article: (1) the Copper River salmon fishery including the Upper and Lower Copper River Management Districts; and (2) the Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH).

Local rural residents are legally allowed to harvest caribou, moose, salmon, muskox, Dall’s sheep, brown and black bears, furbearers, berries, and other resources, for customary and traditional uses. Managers of Alaska’s national parklands make decisions related to setting in-season harvest regulations when delegated specific authority by the regulatory board. They might set seasons, bag limits, and other regulations for the harvest of subsistence resources. For example, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is the in-season manager for salmon in the Copper River and for the Chisana Caribou Herd, and Katmai National Preserve for the Kukaklek Caribou Herd. In national preserves, harvest under state regulations is open to non-rural residents and to out-of-state hunters. Harvest regulations for preserves are determined based on state and federal regulations.

Managers of these subsistence parklands have multiple, and often competing, objectives including facilitating access, following legal guidelines, being responsive to stakeholders, and ensuring resources are conserved. To that end, and to inform NPS management of these activities, staff from individual parks, the NPS Alaska regional office, and national NPS programs expend significant financial resources and time to research and monitor fish and wildlife population dynamics necessary to understand changes in distributions, predator-prey interactions, the impacts of novel environmental conditions, and other drivers that can influence the availability (adequate abundance, access, and seasonal distribution; Brinkman et al. 2016) of these subsistence resources for harvest. NPS staff also engage with, among others, the Federal Subsistence Board, Regional Subsistence Resource Advisory Councils, Subsistence Resource Commissions, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Boards of Fish and Game, and the public involved in reviewing, establishing, or revising regulations that govern activities involving harvest or access. In most Alaska national parklands, NPS is deeply engaged in efforts to understand the many complex interactions among cultural, ecological, social, economic, regulatory, and political aspects of ecosystems.

The scope and complexity of these subsistence-related interactions are such that any consideration of the human dimensions of Alaska national parklands management goes well beyond the traditional framing of management policies. Management Policies (2006) of the national park system recognizes parks as a remarkable collection of places for recreation and learning by visitors (NPS 2006: 1). While such framing certainly is correct, it also is incomplete. In Alaska, more than anywhere, national parklands are places where people and their activities have been integrated for thousands of years and remain inherent components of the ecosystems. (For a more in-depth consideration of the mandates, implications, and nuances of ANILCA, see the Alaska Park Science issue: Commemorating ANILCA at 40.)

The concept of people as part of parkland ecosystems will be obvious to most Alaska Park Science readers because it is how we think about our work; how resource managers in Alaska organize, collaborate, and communicate among themselves and with others; and how they together strive to define and accomplish the NPS mission. Yet, it is insufficiently reflected in our institutional lexicon. Here, we review the origin and application of SES and suggest how it can be applied to manage NPS units holistically and for resilience to undesirable change. We begin by providing a brief overview of SES conceptual frameworks and explain their linkage to resilience theory, describe quantitative analytical SES frameworks, and discuss applications of two current Alaska examples. We conclude with recommendations for next steps toward the inclusion of a SES framework for Alaska national parkland management. The widespread implementation of SES framing for Alaska ecological research and management applications reflects and acknowledges reality and can facilitate the identification of important components and processes, as well as potential pathways and strategies, toward adaptation.

Social-Ecological System Frameworks

The first step for recognizing and using SES is adopting a framework. There are multiple frameworks within the overarching idea of SES, some of which are more “diagnostic” (Ostrom 2007, Chapin et al. 2009, Colding and Barthel 2019) while others describe approaches for specific modeling approaches (Fuller et al. 2017, Gagnon et al. 2023). Both types of frameworks highlight key properties and variables of a system that are important to be considered, as well as their interactions and feedback loops (Figure 2). Frameworks incorporating modeling approaches often draw upon diagnostic frameworks, develop these further, and apply a statistically rigorous approach to solve a specific problem; for example, understanding perceptions of caribou availability to communities in relation to caribou movement under changing climatic conditions (Gagnon et al. 2023).

Figure 2. An example of a social-ecological system framework that accounts for interactions and feedbacks among social and ecological components.

(Chapin et al. 2009, Chapter 1: Framework)

At a basic level, frameworks provide standardized nomenclature that has the potential to facilitate communication and common understanding among diverse stakeholders (McGinnis and Ostrom 2014). SES frameworks are often inherently complex, as many factors impact systems and their ability to function or adapt (Figure 2; Chapin et al. 2009). As any park manager in Alaska will attest, particularly when it comes to subsistence, decisions are complex and require superintendents to weigh social implications and biological impacts, both of which are highly uncertain (Machlis et al. 1997). Thus, the goal in applying SES to national parklands management in Alaska is not to prioritize one component over another or to attempt to simplify these inherently complex systems. Instead, by recognizing national parklands as SES, we can advance our ability to understand a system’s complexity and identify components, their interactions, and their relative resilience, which possibly allows for broader acceptance and overall success in management approaches. For example, we could tackle a management problem in a way where we would (1) identify and physically draw an SES framework such as in Figure 2, identifying all properties, variables, and possible interaction between these components for the management area and problem we are focusing on, and following (2) bring together and collect baseline information on all system components before considering a management action.

Sometimes such approaches are already used intuitively to a certain degree, for example at the superintendent or program manager level, or when developing Resource Stewardship Strategies (RSS; a long-range planning document for a national park unit to achieve its desired natural and cultural resource conditions derived from relevant laws and NPS policies). The RSS is a strategic planning tool that considers a wide range of social and ecological resources such as communities’ traditional use of habitats, basing research on communities’ food-security needs, but also understanding and predicting climatic changes into the future. It is a dynamic management tool, rather than a static planning document, provides a more balanced, integrated approach to natural and cultural resource management and the flexibility to meet the needs of a diversity of national parklands.

To expand on the integration of the RSS approach to become an SES approach would include identifying all social and ecological properties for each system we manage, focusing on interactions and feedback loops between these properties and between research management priorities, considering the human actors and institutional responses to management approaches, identifying institutional barriers to management priority implementation, and integrating the concept of resilience of our systems in management (Figure 2).

SES are closely linked to the ecological concept of resilience and should be considered in unity. The concept of resilience was formed by “Buzz” Holling in the 1970s; he recognized that ecosystem function is far more complex than can be explained by mathematical and physical science models (Holling 1973, Folke 2006). He emphasized the importance of focusing on the conditions for persistence (the qualitative aspects of ecological systems to persist rather than stay the same over time) rather than consistent non-variable performance of a system (quantitative attributes). For example, the qualities that allow a forest to persist as a functioning forest rather than its ability to harbor particular species at fixed levels or to maintain an arbitrary level of primary production. Ecological resilience is measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system redefines its structure by changing the variables and processes that control its behavior (regime shift; Gunderson 2000).

Holling (1973: 21) stated the need to apply the resilience paradigm to management of ecological systems so well:

A management approach based on resilience, would emphasize the need to keep options open, the need to view events in a regional rather than a local context, and the need to emphasize heterogeneity. Flowing from this would be not the presumption of sufficient knowledge, but the recognition of our ignorance; not the assumption that future events are expected, but that they will be unexpected. The resilience framework can accommodate this shift of perspective, for it does not require a precise capacity to predict the future, but only a qualitative capacity to devise systems that can absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take.

Holling’s conceptual framework of resilience was expanded by many over the last decades (e.g., Walker et al. 2004, Folke and Gunderson 2010, Biggs et al. 2015). Specifically, Folke (2006) drew upon it as the emergence of a perspective for SES analysis, describing it as an integrated complex system. Overall, the resilience perspective shifts policies from those that aspire to control change in systems assumed to be stable to managing the capacity of SES to cope with, adapt to, and shape change (Folke 2006), and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging non-linear dynamics, thresholds, uncertainty, and surprise in a systems’ persistence. In particular, it explains how periods of gradual change in a system interplay with periods of rapid change (first gradual, then sudden) and how such dynamics interact across temporal and spatial scales.

Combining these two theoretical concepts, resilience and social-ecological systems, is key to developing lasting ecosystem-based management applications. In a resilient SES, disturbance has the potential to create opportunity for doing new things, for innovation and for development. In vulnerable systems, even small disturbances may have drastic social consequences (Adger 2006, Folke 2006). For example, impacts of natural hazards on communities are increasing worldwide and are projected to rise further due to urban expansion and climate change. A resilient coastal system could cope with natural hazards such as a flood, and could possibly trigger positive outcomes for the community, such as creating room for a more diverse and more productive ecosystem to establish. Whereas a vulnerable system might collapse after a flood and no longer be able to produce the same amount of ecosystem services or lose species richness due to losing ecosystem habitats.

In 2006, integrating resilience research toward understanding SES dynamics and its implications for sustainability was still in its infancy (Folke 2006). Today, the resilience perspective is increasingly used as an approach for understanding dynamics of SES. Since studies of interlinked human and natural systems have emerged as a field on its own, promoting interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration is a widely used practice.

Modeling Approaches

SES is relevant as a conceptual framework, but advances in management and elevated understanding occur through analytical application (Fuller et al. 2017, Gagnon et al. 2023). Despite it being statistically challenging to integrate differently collected data derived from various sources such as surveys and geographic information systems and to identify statistically appropriate ways to include continuous and categorical variables in one model, social and ecological data can be combined in modeling approaches when a spatial and temporal link exists.

For example, Gagnon and others (2023) bridged the incorporation of Indigenous and western scientific knowledge in a single model. The study demonstrates that environmental conditions such as large-scale temporal changes associated with caribou demography and cultural practices affect hunters’ capacity to meet their needs in caribou. It further shows that hunters’ perception of caribou availability is a better indicator for hunting success than the true availability of caribou on the landscape, as perceptions determine if hunters decide to spend resources and attempt the hunt in the first place. Using this complex approach bolsters our understanding of the intricate relationships between ecosystems and human welfare in environments exposed to rapid climate change and shows the benefits of long-term participatory research methods implemented by Indigenous and scientific partners. In this instance, the direct impact to management entities is that good communication with communities and understanding their attitudes and motivation (social factors) is of higher importance than putting extended effort toward tracking caribou movement (ecological factors); understanding both is important to see their interlinked nature. We can identify and evaluate management decisions and allocation of often limited funds toward more effective and efficient management strategies when understanding the whole complex interdisciplinary system.

Similarly, a SES approach to fisheries management calls for understanding the many involved parties, such as rural communities, various management agencies, and advisory councils; the network of complex social and cultural interactions with the resource and among stakeholders; and the relative adaptive capacity and specific coping mechanisms of each stakeholder group. Fuller and others (2017), for example, constructed fisheries connectivity networks and, by doing so, were able to detect fishers’ resilience and distinct functional units they operate within. Their network metrics directly informed policy makers of the social vulnerability of coastal fishing communities, especially their sensitivity and capacity to adapt to change.

Alaska Examples

In Alaska, the NPS is currently managing projects guided by the principles of SES whereby we are working closely with local communities and pursuing projects communities have identified to be of high importance. Two of these include (1) evaluating the availability of Copper River salmon sockeye and chinook salmon to upper Copper River communities (human-salmon SES) and (2) evaluating the availability of caribou in the western Arctic (human-caribou SES).

The Human-Salmon SES

In the upper Copper River, subsistence users face increasing food security challenges due to environmental and regulatory factors contributing to declining salmon availability (DeSantis and Ward 2023). For these communities, salmon are central to cultural traditions, nutrition, social bonds, and economic stability (Naves et al. 2015). The practice of fishing for, harvesting, processing, sharing, and consuming salmon fosters mutual support and connection to place, but declining availability threatens these long-standing traditions and overall community wellbeing in Alaska.

In recent years, environmental shifts have placed increasing pressure on salmon populations, raising concerns about the long-term viability of subsistence harvests. The Gulf of Alaska, where the Copper River meets the ocean, has experienced unprecedented warming in the past decade (Walsh et al. 2018). Glacial melt is expected to increase river discharge and sedimentation, impacting fish health and habitat quality (Larsen et al. 2015). River erosion is changing channel locations and disrupting the quality of well-established and previously reliable fishing sites (USACE 2007). These shifts were underscored in 2018 and 2020, when record-low sockeye salmon returns prompted emergency government intervention, including a 41-day commercial fishery closure (Botz and Somerville 2021).

As environmental challenges intensify, competition among different user groups on the Copper River is also increasing (Figure 3). At the mouth of the river, commercial fishing occurs where chinook, sockeye, and coho salmon are caught primarily for commercial sale. Harvest levels at the mouth of the river have varied over the past 25 years with populations trending downward (Botz et al. 2024). There is also a personal-use fishery along the Copper River in the Chitina Subdistrict, where participation is limited to Alaska residents only that use dip nets or fish wheels. In addition to personal use by all Alaska residents, subsistence fishing occurs at 4 locations along the river, intended for rural residents who depend on salmon for food security. Lastly, sport fishing (open to non-residents and fish are caught using a hook and line by hand) mainly targets chinook and sockeye salmon, with activity concentrated in the Gulkana, Klutina, and Tonsina Rivers, all tributaries to the Copper River.

Figure 3. Initial SES framework for the Copper River salmon fishery social-ecological system, including “first-tier variables” represented by different colors.

After McGinnis and Ostrom 2014. See McGinnis and Ostrom (2014) for associated second-tier variables, and Lamborn and others (2023) for other fisheries examples.

Given these increasing pressures, under-standing how these impacts are being experienced by up-river communities is important. The human-salmon SES project will analyze long-term quantitative subsistence, personal use, and commercial harvest data, and biological monitoring data (e.g., sonar and weir counts) from the Copper River Basin. These data will be supplemented with qualitative data from community household surveys and from meeting minutes from the Regional Advisory Councils and Subsistence Resource Committees. These councils and committees are comprised of groups of local rural residents that contribute to the management of subsistence resources. By incorporating insights from community harvest surveys, federal subsistence meetings, and key monitoring sites along the river, this project aims to provide a broader context for how salmon availability is changing and how these changes are being experienced by up-river communities. The goal of this integrative approach is to contribute to a more holistic, informed, and responsive fisheries management strategy and a better understanding of food security within the region that adequately accounts for social and ecological components.

The Human-Caribou SES

In Northwest Alaska, the Western Arctic Caribou Herd (WACH) is a vital source of food and culture for local communities. The annual range of the WACH spans much of Northwest Alaska with the fall migration range overlapping 5 parklands. Since peaking at approximately 490,000 animals in 2003, the WACH has declined to an estimated 150,000 in 2023 (Joly and Cameron 2024). Alongside this population decline, both agency monitoring and local observations indicate a shift in the herd’s annual distribution and migration timing. Where caribou once crossed major rivers in August and September in the 2000s, they are now crossing as late as November (Joly and Cameron 2024). The decline in abundance and change in seasonal distribution has disrupted access to caribou, leading to major concerns in overall availability of caribou to local communities. Exploring trends and patterns in availability are urgent research needs with important implications for caribou management and community well-being.

Many subsistence hunters rely on river corridors such as the Kobuk, Selawik, and Noatak to conduct fall hunts, harvesting caribou in or near the rivers prior to freeze-up. This hunting practice is efficient, accessible, and cost-effective, and yields high-quality meat while offering safe and culturally significant opportunities for younger generations to learn from elders (Creek and Fronstin 2025). However, the rapidly changing migration (Gurarie et al. 2024) has prompted riskier and more expensive hunting efforts while river ice and snow conditions are unstable (WACH Working Group 2022). In some cases, this shift has disrupted long-standing practices of intergenerational knowledge transmission and community-based harvesting, illustrating the broader social-ecological consequences of herd instability. The loss of some river-based hunting opportunities represents not only an ecological change but also a cultural disruption, particularly for younger hunters who rely on these seasonal patterns to learn both practical and ethical aspects of subsistence hunting. For example, with caribou arriving later, local hunters are less able to harvest bull caribou because of the effect of the rut on the quality of the meat. They must then harvest some female caribou which can be problematic for herd growth and presents an ethical dilemma. This is one of many instances in Northwest Alaska of how the human-caribou SES is inextricably linked.

Caribou hunting involves inherent risks to life and livelihood; these risks are now compounded by shifting environmental and economic pressures. More variable river ice conditions during fall migration increase physical danger, while rising fuel and food costs intensify the economic burden of hunting (or not hunting). Uncertain migration timing complicates the decision to hunt, particularly for wage earners who must weigh time off work against the possibility of missing the herd. Understanding how these intertwined factors affect caribou availability—whether caribou are present in sufficient numbers (abundance), whether their migration routes bring them near communities (distribution), and whether subsistence users can reach and harvest them (access)—is crucial to understanding the SES.

This project will adopt a SES approach similar to the human-salmon SES by integrating both quantitative harvest and herd movement data and a qualitative analysis of public meeting transcripts from the mid-1990s to obtain a measure of if and how caribou availability to communities has changed over space and time. The first part of this project aims to document variation in trends and patterns of availability of caribou. The next step will be statistical modeling to estimate how different variables (ecological and social) influence changes in availability. The second part will investigate how changing caribou availability impacts broader food security measures for communities (e.g., sharing, commercial food purchasing). After identifying key variables associated with availability, the SES framework will guide an exploration of how shifts in caribou populations affect community food systems and well-being. This integrated analysis will identify relationships between ecological change and food security outcomes.

By combining long-term quantitative data with a robust record of individual and community-level insights, this project will provide a comprehensive assessment of caribou availability over time by documenting long-term changes and modelling the evolving food systems in Northwest Alaska. Despite the herd’s ecological and cultural importance, these dynamics have been underexamined but are critical to understanding and responding to the social-ecological consequences of caribou decline.

Benefits of Alaska SES Examples

These projects explore two different SES in Alaska but are guided by similar principles and offer beneficial outcomes for both subsistence users and resource managers, who can sometimes face challenges when trying to apply local knowledge in adaptive decision making. This research can serve as a resource for both communities and agencies to demonstrate mixed methods approaches (i.e., integration of quantitative and qualitative data) that can benefit the regulatory process and serve subsistence managers by defining multiyear patterns of the systems. It further can help inform resource managers about shifts in people’s behaviors based on resource availability and identify resiliency of individuals and communities. Local collaborators are more likely to support an approach that accounts for their values and attitudes, and understand and accept the outcomes (e.g., management actions, policy decisions) that are informed by it.

Recommendations

We advocate for acknowledging that we are stewards of SES as an overarching, organizing principle for our institutional structure and function, and for our work together in Alaska. This has implications to how we organize ourselves, implement management strategies, and select the language we use in messaging. SES and subsistence should be framed in a holistic way to be managed successfully. As we embrace the SES approach, we will improve our management toolbox with complex, interdisciplinary, resilient frameworks and management approaches.

A few suggestions for how we can move toward creating such management opportunities:

• Develop conceptual SES frameworks for Alaska national parklands (parks, preserves, and monuments), and apply these in management decision making.
• Build on the RSS approach. Consider investigating the concept of adaptive governance (an approach used for dealing with complex societal issues with many stakeholders and uncertainty about actions to be taken; Janssen and Van der Voort 2016) and how it could be integrated with our stewardship approaches.
• Not just encourage but strongly support interdisciplinary and collaborative work when projects arise and require outside expertise from other disciplines. Prioritize funding interdisciplinary project proposals.
• Work with communities to identify strategies for co-production of knowledge that shapes research priorities and agendas. This includes the integration of local knowledge in each step of the management and research process from design to implementation, interpretation of results, and dissemination of findings.
• Identify NPS internal barriers (such as possibly limited financial resources, delays in hiring, high turnover in staffing) as well as opportunities (such as prioritize hiring interdisciplinary staff to fill previous disciplinary positions, hire a facilitator to help develop interdisciplinary training, and encourage integration and cross-training) to acquire missing expertise and make interdisciplinary teams effective.
• Additional possibilities could include: (1) increase the capacity for interdisciplinary positions and reconsider the balance between specialists and generalists (2) add cross-training as developmental requirements; (3) identify pathways to educate people about other disciplines; and (4) identify the key role they can play when supporting other disciplines’ work teams or interdisciplinary working groups.

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Cite this article as:

Jochum, K., S. Iverson, and C. Luby. 2025. Managing
Alaska’s national parklands as resilient socialecological
systems. Alaska Park Science 23(1), 2025.