Speakers Cover Climate Change From View of Humanities and Science

logo-w-sunburstKayla Desroches/KMXT

A series of talks Saturday will apply many different academic disciplines to one overarching theme: climate change. The day’s schedule includes perspectives from English studies, science, and archaeology.

The Kodiak College Community Engagement Committee is responsible for the event’s organization. Committee member Libby Eufemio, an assistant professor of Alaska Native studies, says in the past they’ve brought a host of politicians, artists, and environmental speakers to Kodiak as part of the college’s educational outreach.This year, they went down the mini-conference route.

The forums will continue throughout the day.

Speakers will include college employees and representatives from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Eufemio says Curator of Archaeology Patrick Saltonstall from the Alutiiq Museum will give a special presentation on how climate change and archaeology interact.

“The neat thing is that climate change has happened through time. We see different fluctuations through temperature and precipitation all through time, and it’s just a matter of how quickly that happens and how quickly people can adapt to that. And since Kodiak is a fishing community and so much of our economy is based around natural resources, anything that affects those natural resources is gonna be interesting to us.”

Saltonstall will also cover how climate change could be affecting archaeological sites. For instance, wear and tear due to increased rain and bad weather.

Other lecture subjects will include a broad overview of global warming in Alaska and how ocean acidification affects crab. That all begins tomorrow with coffee and pastries at 9:30 p.m. at the college.

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