USGS Outstanding in the Field, Episode 11, Designing Accessible Research for Rural Communities

[Intro music fades out]

JESSIE YOUNG ROBERTSON

Welcome, to this special edition of Outstanding in the Field, the U.S. Geological Survey’s podcast series produced by the Ecosystems Mission Area. Today we bring you a special edition where we will be highlighting stories from the Alaska Voices podcast, a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This series is a place for communities to connect through conversation in order to build a better tomorrow. I’m Jessie Young Robertson.

[Accent Music and Alaska Voices: “Originally I grew up in Gakona, Alaska.” “Tyonek” “Egypt” “Idaho” “Rampart” “St. Lawrence Island” “St. Paul” “And I’m here with my student” “My science buddy” “My teacher” “My homie” “I’m his daughter”]

[Coastal background sounds]

RYAN TOOHEY

My name is Ryan Toohey and I am 40 years old. Erica Mitchell is a colleague of mine.

ERICA MITCHELL

So my name is Erica Mitchell. I am 29 years old and I am a colleague of Ryan's.

RYAN TOOHEY

So you've been here, you said, for almost ten years. Have you noticed any changes over the time that you've been here?

ERICA MITCHELL

I think the biggest change that I have noticed is timing in winter freeze-up and spring breakup. And I think that everybody says that because it's something that annoys us. So my mother grew up here and she talks about freezing winters and tons of snow.

But even outside of Alaska, Colorado is changing, as well. And I think that hits home a little bit more to me because it's so closely associated with my identity. I'm a desert person. I wait for the cactus to bloom. I wait for summer thunderstorms that will pass in ten minutes and flood the roads.

And to hear that precipitation levels are changing, the patterns are changing, the snow pack is lessening, that makes me think about my home community's water supply. But also the water that we have available to irrigate crops. Because that is one of southern Colorado's really special gems, I think. The Rocky Ford cantaloupe and the Pueblo chile.

RYAN TOOHEY

Nice. Very important.

ERICA MITCHELL

To think about those two things going away is heartbreaking. But I think that that experience also makes me think a little bit more about the conversations that we have up here, about the reduction in sea ice, and fluctuations in salmon abundance. To lose that resource that is so central to an identity puts you into an individual crisis. Not to mention a cultural one, a social one.

RYAN TOOHEY      

What's your academic training?

ERICA MITCHELL

I have a bachelor in sociology and am so close to getting my master in anthropology. I think that as I've developed professionally, I don't quite attach scientist to my title anymore because people don't always follow these Newtonian scientific rules, right? But that in itself is beautiful and contributes so much to knowledge in general and I wouldn't have it any other way.

RYAN TOOHEY

Can you give us an example of some of the work you do, either currently or in the past?

ERICA MITCHELL

I've worked in rural Alaska helping people to understand the changes that are happening across the state. By helping, really I'm just documenting, because what I have learned is that there is no one way of knowing our environment. There is no one way of understanding our environment.

If you think about traditional knowledge as something that has been built by generation and generation, based on a series of observations and adaptations to changes, I came in too late to see any of that. But the local knowledge is something that a person with an intimate personal knowledge of their own space can share. We're very focused on sea ice forecasting and satellite imagery and so we have these concentration maps. I like looking at those and then talking to someone from a community and saying, what does the shore-fast ice look like in Shishmaref today? And people will say, well, it looks like this. It's not actually connected to the shore. It's piling up. It's small, little ground-truthing efforts like that that I think move us forward in saying, OK, so this climate projection, maybe that doesn't quite fit.

My favorite thing is radio communication. My first trip out into rural Alaska was to Kivalina and we had the little VHF radios and people were singing each other happy birthday from other communities. Singing each other songs. Just getting shout-outs, congratulating people that had harvested whales. And I thought, for the geographic disparities, Alaska's huge, Alaska is huge, what a community that builds.

RYAN TOOHEY

Something that we talk about as scientists and as part of the government, where I think it's often felt that we are having a one-way communication. Like we've done the science, we're the government, here it is, right? And I don't think that model necessarily works that great, specifically talking with Alaska Native communities. Do you have any thoughts on good ways to communicate science and encourage that two-way communication?

ERICA MITCHELL

I think that the first thing that agencies have to acknowledge is there's an extreme power imbalance between what value we put on scientific knowledge and what value we put on local knowledge. Local knowledge is often construed as being anecdotal. The more that agencies create a space for the inclusion of local knowledge, the better their science will become. I am quite sure of this.

RYAN TOOHEY

I think that one of the biggest things I've learned from working in communities is that I earn a salary as a scientist and I get paid to go out to these communities and I have certain science questions that I'm interested in for my own career and that type of thing, and hopefully that's very applicable to the communities. But I feel like I've had to make, and that's something I've been working on for the past couple years, even an extra effort to really try and tie the science to a community interest of some sort.

ERICA MITCHELL

Information that's produced has to be accessible and it has to be made available. Sometimes we have to give way in our search for these broad trends, give a little bit of that up and start applying it in a way that makes the information useful for people. That's when you put value in it. And that's when people engage. And that's when you learn all the different ways that people are understanding what's going on. And that's when it becomes cool.

RYAN TOOHEY

Totally. For sure, for sure. Well, thanks. I learned a lot today. It's been great to talk to you, Erica.

ERICA MITCHELL

It was good to talk to you, Ryan.

JESSIE YOUNG ROBERTSON

Alaska Voices builds bridges by creating a space where community members, friends, policy makers, and scientists can share stories and place-based knowledge. This project was developed in partnership with StoryCorp and was funded by the US Geological Survey’s Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center. Additional funding was provided by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Chancellor, through a generous gift from the Bentley Family Trust. Alaska Voices would not be possible without the help and efforts of an amazing group of people. Our producer and audio engineer is Kelsey Skonberg of Mossy Stone Media, our podcast and outreach specialist is Michael DeLue, and our website designer is Carolyn Rossner. If you are interested in more conversations or information, please visit our website at alaskavoices.org.