Collaborative Research: Working with Inuit Elders and Youth to Identify, Document, and Quantify, and Share Human-Relevant Environmental Variables (HREVs) in Clyde River, Nunavut

本奖项支持人类学家、地理学家和大气科学家的科学研究，以了解通常测量天气的方式与北极土著居民外出旅行和工作所需的因素之间的关系。就像风寒一样，温度和风速的组合已经成为许多美国人常用的天气信息组合，因为因纽特人的能见度和海况是决定是旅行还是待在原地的关键因素。例如，能见度是云量、风、雪况、地形等因素的产物。研究小组将寻求量化因素，并通过老年人和青少年营地进行测试。反过来，长老们和青年们将对科学家们进行培训，让他们了解在北极安全、成功地旅行和工作的微妙本质。如果成功，该团队计划与预测机构和其他机构分享这些因素，以增加可操作知识的生产。本研究将与北极东部的因纽特人社区密切合作，调查与人类有关的环境变量，共同产生关于北极天气的知识，以便为决策提供信息，从而实现在陆地、公海和海冰上安全、高效的旅行，以获取食物和其他文化目的。在研究小组与努纳武特地区克莱德河社区的合作中，他们发现，综合环境变量（如能见度、吹雪、浪高）比单个气象变量（如气温、风速）更重要。此外，将通过与美国和格陵兰岛的其他社区合作，扩大和加强这项工作。简而言之，因纽特人综合了代表自然环境的复杂变量，从而做出有利于他们在这种环境中生活的决定。这项研究将在因纽特人熟悉的环境中进行，并与因纽特人的社会价值观和互动保持一致，在阿拉斯加土著和东北极因纽特人之间组织一系列老年人-青年科学营。这种方法与促进老年人和青年之间的互动和知识转移以及与访问科学家合作的强烈社区利益重叠。当长老们考虑该怎么做的时候，他们也在教导年轻人，把许多通常是隐含的想法和考虑明确地表达出来。反过来，年轻人将通过在营地期间记录他们的活动以及他们所学和所做的事情来帮助记录这种知识转移。研究小组的参与观察将深入了解这一过程，因此他们可以了解对天气和相关因素的认识是如何产生的，并允许他们对这些因素进行数学描述。除了通常的项目出版物和学术演讲外，科学家们还将增加他们现有的当地气象站网络和相关的因纽特语（加拿大东部因纽特语）和英语公共网站，该网站报告近实时的天气数据。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Paragraph 1 This award supports scientific research by anthropologists, geographers, and atmospheric scientists to understand the relationship between how weather is normally measured and the factors that Arctic Indigenous peoples need to travel and work out of doors. In the same way that wind-chill, a combination of temperature and wind speed has become a commonly used composite of weather information used by many Americans, for Inuit visibility and sea-state are critical factors in whether to travel or stay put. For example, visibility is a product of cloud cover, wind, snow conditions, terrain, and more. The research team will seek to quantify factors and test them through camps for Elders and youth. In turn, the Elders and youth will train scientists about the nuanced nature of safely and successfully traveling and working in the Arctic. If successful, the team plans to share the factors with forecast agencies and others to increase the production of actionable knowledge. Paragraph 2 This research will investigate human-relevant environmental variables in close collaboration with an Inuit community in the Eastern Arctic to co-produce knowledge on Arctic weather in order to inform decisions that enable safe, productive travel on land, open sea, and sea-ice required for acquiring food and other cultural purposes. In the research team's work with the community of Clyde River, Nunavut, they have found that synthetic environmental variables (e.g., visibility, blowing snow, wave height) are more important than individual meteorological variables (e.g., air temperature, wind speed). In addition, the work will be expanded and strengthened by working with additional communities in the US and Greenland. In short, Inuit synthesize complex variables representing the natural environment to inform decisions that facilitate their life-way in this environment. The research will be carried out in a setting familiar to Inuit and consistent with Inuit social values and interactions, organized as a series of Elder-youth science camps between Alaska Native and Eastern Arctic Inuit. This approach overlaps with strong community interests in fostering interactions and knowledge transfer among Elders and youth, as well as collaborating with visiting scientists. As Elders consider what to do, they will also be teaching the youth, making explicit many thoughts and considerations that otherwise typically remain implicit. The youth, in turn, will help document this knowledge transfer by keeping journals during the camps about their activities and what they are learning and doing. Participant observation by the research team will give insight into this process, so they can understand how awareness of weather and related factors emerge, and will allow them to create mathematical descriptions of those factors. In addition to the usual project publications and presentations for academic audiences, the scientists will add to their existing network of local weather stations and the associated Inuktitut (Eastern Canadian Inuit language) and English public website that reports near-real-time weather dataThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.