Vulnerability to climate change in Arctic Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis is an investigation of vulnerability to climate change in Arctic Canada. It develops a conceptual model and analytical approach to guide vulnerability analysis. The model conceptualizes vulnerability as a function of exposure-sensitivity to biophysical stresses and adaptive capacity to cope with these stresses. Both model elements are closely inter-linked and influenced by process and conditions endogenous and exogenous to the system of interest. The analytical framework utilizes community case studies to analyze vulnerability and its drivers. It starts by characterizing current vulnerability, which provides an empirical foundation and baseline for assessment of future vulnerability. Using case studies in two Inuit communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut (Arctic Bay and Igloolik), 119 interviews were conducted. Interviews were complemented with participant observation and analysis of secondary sources. The work largely focuses on vulnerabilities surrounding resource harvesting, identified by communities as being most pertinent to their livelihoods. The study highlights the dynamic nature of vulnerability. A combination of changing climatic conditions superimposed on changes in harvesting behaviour has altered, and tended to increase, the exposure-sensitivity of both communities. In light of changing exposure-sensitivity, Inuit have demonstrated significant adaptive capacity. This adaptability is facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, strong social networks, and flexibility in seasonal hunting cycles. Changing Inuit livelihoods, however, have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity, and have resulted in emerging vulnerabilities. Future climate change will affect biophysical conditions to which Inuit in Arctic Bay and Igloolik are currently exposed. Decreasing sea-ice thickness, longer ice freeze-up, earlier sea ice break-up, changing occurrence of weather extremes, and alterations in animal numbers will increase the dangers of hunting, decrease access to hunting areas, and affect the availability of traditional foods. Exposure-sensitivity to these changes will be differentiated based on use of and dependence on the environment. Analysis of current vulnerability indicates significant adaptive capacity to deal with climate change related risks, although this capacity will vary among groups. The study argues that young generation Inuit, in particular, are vulnerable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".