John Ziker, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, co-authored “A Convergence Science Approach to Understanding the Changing Arctic” in the Earth’s Future journal.
The Arctic is under pressure from rapid climate change and industrialization. These forces have far-reaching impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure and communities. But as challenges in grow in the Arctic, narrowly focused research in single disciplines may not be enough to solve these complex problems.
That’s where this paper comes in. Ziker and his co-authors showed how to apply convergence science – an interdisciplinary method for tackling emerging problems in complex systems – to Arctic studies. They explored case studies in the Yamal Peninsula and the Russian Arctic where convergence science can help researchers.
“Collaborating in this project and in writing this article was a great pleasure, having worked with this international network for several years,” Ziker said. “Incorporating lenses of Earth system scientists, ecologists and anthropologists, we have all learned a lot from each other and developed common language for understanding the linkages between system elements in the context of rapid change.”