Speaking: Vera Kuklina, The George Washington University
The Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) invites registration for the next Arctic Research Seminar featuring Vera Kuklina, an Indigenous scholar born and raised in a Buryat village in Siberia and a Research Professor at the George Washington University. Vera's presentation, titled What Arctic Science Can Learn from Studies of Informal Roads in Siberian Taiga, will be held via Zoom.
Registration is required for this event. Instructions for accessing the webinar will be sent to registrants prior to the event.
Seminar Abstract
Informal roads are an inevitable part of human presence in landscapes and serve as a means of transportation and communication. They are used for subsistence, resource exploration and extraction, and for connectivity. However, in fragile Arctic and Sub-Arctic landscapes, the rapid development of these roads indicates uncontrolled extractive development, landscape fragmentation, and other environmental and societal disturbances. Therefore, these roads provide an important perspective for measuring sustainability of social-ecological systems. In this presentation, Vera Kuklina summarizes the results of a three-year NSF-funded project and highlights lessons learned from long-term collaboration with local and Indigenous communities in Siberian taiga of Baikal region. The project utilized a combination of social, environmental, and remote sensing methods. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the studies of infrastructure patterns, creation, use, maintenance, and abandonment can be relevant for understanding human-environment relations in the Arctic and beyond.