Thanks to an NSF grant, MSU researchers will collaborate to examine the effects of shipping, natural resource development and tourism on socio-economic and environmental conditions in the Bering Strait region. That area is a rapidly changing shipping corridor, tourist destination and prospective mining area, and hosts ecologically and culturally important marine ecosystems. Marine mammals use the region as a migratory corridor and provide important subsistence food sources to local communities.
More vessel traffic means increased threats of oil spills, noise disturbances and animals tangled in fishing lines or struck by ships. Each effect also has the likelihood of causing complex consequences for both people and wildlife, which offers this project a unique opportunity to explore these interactions and find ways to predict how the Arctic region is evolving.
“The changing climate has resulted in more than the opening of shipping channels in the Arctic waters, it has drastically changed complex relationships between humans and nature,” said CSIS Director?Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at MSU.