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Dramatic social changes are occurring across rural America as traditional natural resource-based industries such as fishing and forestry decline, and amenity-driven development attracts new residents and visitors. These changes are altering not only the economies and cultural identities of rural communities, but also entire regions where seemingly similar towns respond to these social and economic shifts in distinct ways. Using survey data from 1,541 residents of Southeast Alaska, we examine individual views regarding the role of fishing, forestry, and tourism in this region's economic future. We also assess beliefs about the importance of conserving natural resources and the preservation of the area's cultural character within new development efforts. Findings show that social factors such as age, education, political party affiliation, and individuals' economic well-being, along with place of residence explain diverging views. Given the changing demographics and the shifting interconnections between different communities within rural regions, these results illustrate the importance of designing investigations that capture broad regional trends while also highlighting the key place-specific factors that shape beliefs about natural resource-related industries and the priorities for future rural development activities.

Abstract
Anthropological and ethnohistorical accounts of the Northwest Coast and Southeast Alaska have underemphasized the early and thorough industrialization of the area. This paper describes the transformation of Native families and community forms by small scale salmon‐canning firms in the late 19th and early 20th century, beginning with the building of the first salmon cannery in Klawock, Alaska, in 1878. Attention to the unmaking of past forms of obligation and expectation leads to an understanding of the volatility of specifically local histories in Native villages. Totem poles and tricycle races are both locations of ambiguous cultural production that are tied to these histories in overlapping and complex ways, and as such, they serve as metaphors for the larger processes at work in these towns.

Alaska is frequently at the center of national and international climate change discussions. It is the only U.S. state that lies partially in the Arctic, where so much global climate change has been recorded. It is the only state with indigenous people who live in the Arctic and who harvest fish and game from Arctic waters and lands. It is the only state with thousands of square miles of permafrost—permanently frozen dirt mixed with ice under the ground cover that on the arctic coastal plain can extend 2,000 feet below the surface.

Salmon are important vectors for biogeochemical transport across ecosystem boundaries. Here we quantified salmon contributions to annual catchment fluxes of nutrients (N and P) and organic matter (C, N, and P) from a forested catchment in coastal southeast Alaska. Concentrations of ammonium and soluble reactive phosphorus increased by several orders of magnitude during spawning and were significantly correlated with spawning salmon densities. Nitrate concentrations increased modestly during spawning and were not significantly correlated with salmon densities. Salmon had a modest legacy effect on inorganic N and P as evidenced by elevated streamwater concentrations past the end of the spawning period. Dissolved organic carbon concentrations did not respond to the presence of salmon; however, concentrations of dissolved organic nitrogen and phosphorus showed a significant positive relationship to salmon densities. Changes in spectroscopic properties of the bulk streamwater dissolved organic matter pool indicated that streamwater dissolved organic matter became less aromatic and biolabile during spawning. On an annual basis, salmon were the dominant source of streamwater fluxes of inorganic nutrients, accounting for 92%, 65%, and 74% of annual streamwater fluxes of ammonium, nitrate, and soluble reactive phosphorus, respectively. In contrast, fluxes of organic matter were dominated by catchment sources with salmon accounting for <1% of the annual catchment flux of dissolved organic carbon and 12% and 15% of the annual fluxes of dissolved organic nitrogen and phosphorous respectively. These findings indicate that, in small coastal catchments, salmon can be a quantitatively important source of dissolved streamwater nutrients with implications for productivity in downstream estuarine ecosystems. ; Alaska EPSCoR, NSF award [OIA-1208927]; USDA-NRI Research Program [2005-35102-16289] ; Alaska EPSCoR, Grant/Award Number: NSF award #OIA-1208927; USDA-NRI Research Program, Grant/Award Number: Award #2005-35102-16289 ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

Since the early 20th century various schemes were considered for the construction of roads, trails or railways 71 to link the Yukon, northern British Columbia and Alaska to the "outside." These schemes were motivated by economic interests, including mining, lumber and tourism concerns. During the 1920s and 1930s a small but vocal group of "builders" began to campaign for a highway, either a coastal or inland route, to improve the northwest's economic base. With the impending threat of war in the late 1930s, there was an increasing awareness by the American and Canadian governments of the vulnerability of the Pacific Coast to both air and sea attacks by "unfriendly" nations. In 1939, the Northwest Staging Route (NWSR) was surveyed by the Canadian Department of Transportation with the view towards improving the existing airfields for year round use between Edmonton and Fairbanks, and meeting increasing military needs. The unexpected bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 stimulated interest in the construction of the Alaska Highway by the American government. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected a route based on the location of the NWSR airfields and the military needs for an alternative land route to Alaska for defence purposes. The military was not interested in developing or planning a highway for the civilian needs of the future. The chosen route ran from Edmonton to Whitehorse, then on to Fairbanks. The U.S. Army and U.S. Public Roads Administration (PRA) roughed out a "pioneer" road in eight months in 1942; the PRA then hired civilian contractors who improved the highway in 1943 and 1944. During this time the Americans grew increasingly concerned over the lack of petroleum available in the north and the submarine threat to oil tankers transporting fuel on the Pacific Ocean. Thus the Canol project was developed to ensure a continuing supply of petroleum to meet military needs. The end result of the Canol project was a pipeline and road network transporting oil from Norman Wells on the Mackenzie River, Northwest Territories, to Whitehorse, Watson Lake and Fairbanks. The military need for the Alaska Highway and Canol pipeline declined at the end of World War II. In 1946, Canada officially accepted responsibility for maintaining and developing the Yukon portion of the Alaska Highway. The Alaska Highway affected both First Nations and non-First Nations peoples immediately. The impacts included an increased awareness of the world outside of the Yukon, imported ideas and technology, improved health care, highway transportation, telecommunications, and the development of more mining and tourist-related industries.

AbstractWe summarize the potential nature and scope of economic effects of climate change in Alaska that have already occurred and are likely to become manifest over the next 30–50 years. We classified potential effects discussed in the literature into categories according to climate driver, type of environmental service affected, certainty and timing of the effects, and potential magnitude of economic consequences. We then described the nature of important economic effects and provided estimates of larger, more certain effects for which data were available. Largest economic effects were associated with costs to prevent damage, relocate, and replace infrastructure threatened by permafrost thaw, sea level rise, and coastal erosion. The costs to infrastructure were offset by a large projected reduction in space heating costs attributable to milder winters. Overall, we estimated that five relatively certain, large effects that could be readily quantified would impose an annual net cost of $340–$700 million, or 0.6%–1.3% of Alaska's GDP. This significant, but relatively modest, net economic effect for Alaska as a whole obscures large regional disparities, as rural communities face large projected costs while more southerly urban residents experience net gains.