MINI REVIEW article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Interdisciplinary Climate Studies
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1619823
This article is part of the Research TopicFrom Melting Ice to Scorching Heatwaves: A Global Call for Multidisciplinary Solutions Toward Climate Resilience and a Sustainable, Greener FutureView all articles
A review of Emergent Vulnerabilities Indices in the Alaska Arctic
Provisionally accepted
- 1San Diego State University, San Diego, California, United States
- 2University of Maine, Orono, United States
- 3NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States
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Human populations are increasingly impacted by climate change, especially in the Arctic, where Polar Amplification is accelerating impacts to more than four times the global average. The complex, interconnected risks that result need to be measured and tracked to characterize highly impacted areas. We reviewed a select cross-section of published vulnerability indices developed to characterize change in the Alaska Arctic. These pertain to permafrost thaw, water availability, animal habitat and migration, and anthropogenic development. While this cross-section offers a diversity of analysis, the next step would be to increase the accessibility of the indices to Arctic communities. Increasing availability of these tools will enable the incorporation and planning for these interconnected vulnerabilities.
Keywords: Alaska, Vulnerability, risk, Climate Change, environment
Received: 28 Apr 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bushnell, Miner, Sousa and Baskaran. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kimberley R Miner, University of Maine, Orono, United States
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