Figure 1
A dynamic conceptual model of how exogenous drivers could impact the dynamics of a social-ecological system (SES) which, in this case activates a transition from a provisioning action situation to an appropriation action situation. The pressure from a driver can increase or decrease, and thus either inhibit or activate a transition. The colors of the arrows indicate the relationship between the driver and the response; blue for positive effect and red for negative effect. Under the provisioning action situation the resource users are limited by the fluctuations in a large and uncontrollable renewable resource. A number of exogenous drivers working on the resource might have negative consequences for the state of the resource (left side). Similarly, drivers working on the resource users might enhance the harvest efficiency and the resource demand (right side). Note that the list of exogenous drivers is not exhaustive. Increased harvest pressure could be a result of 1) increased harvest efficiency and increased resource demand, and/or 2) increased harvest efficiency and reduced state of the resource. The result of an increased harvest pressure could be a transition of the SES from a donor controlled system where the collective challenge is to secure the subsistence on a local scale, to a common-pool resource system where the collective challenge is to avoid overuse on the scale of the resource system. Once an appropriation action situation has been introduced several pathways for the SES transition is possible, e.g. resource collapse, self-organizing of resource users to avoid over-harvest or governmental top-down regulations.
Figure 2
Human settlements within or close to the circumpolar Arctic tundra biome (Walker et al. 2005) including a 100 km buffer zone to the south. Population data are from the most recent official statistics in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia. See Appendix 1 for data sources.
Table 1
Relative importance and characteristics of different wildlife resources in Arctic Alaska, Canada and Greenland. The percentage of harvest is the resource-specific biomass harvested as percentage of the total harvested biomass. A dominant resource characteristic is indicated with black cell. Grey shading indicates that the feature might be present to some extent. White cells indicate that this is not a typical feature of the resource. A detailed specification of the rationale behind the classifications are given in Appendix 2.
Figure 3
Population development in Greenland, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Arctic Alaska from the beginning of the 20th century. Arctic Alaska includes Nome Census Area, North Slope Borough, Northwest Arctic Borough and Wade Hampton Census Area. Note that the southern part of Northwest Territories is not within the Arctic definition of Figure 2. Data from Nunavut, which is entirely within the Arctic definition, was available from 1986 to 2012. See Appendix 1 for data sources.
Figure 4
Harvest of wildlife and fish resources with respect to (A) year and (B) community size in Canada and Alaska combined. The figures show the predicted values (±standard error) from a Generalized Additive Mixed Model with total harvest rate as a dependent variable and year and log community size as independent variables. In (A) community size is held constant and equal to 386 (the median community size). In (B) year is held constant and equal to 2007 (the last year with data). Random components were community (st.dev.=0.20) within region (st.dev.=0.09). Residual st.dev.=0.13. R2(adj) of the model was 0.44, N=326 (community, years).
Figure 5
Trends in the harvest of wildlife and fish resources for large and small communities separately. Median community size (386 inhabitants) was used as cut-off. Model formulation was the same as for Figure 4. Figures show the predicted values (± standard error) for the median large and median small community (789 and 154 inhabitants). Effect of year was significant in both models (P<0.001).
Figure 6
Harvests of wildlife in Greenland; (A) seabirds, (B) cetaceans, (C) pinnipeds and (D) reindeer and muskox. * indicates national red-listed species.
Figure 7
Hunting permits (professional and non-professional) issued in Greenland.
Table A1
Descriptive statistics of subsistence harvest data from Canada and Alaska.
| N (community and year) | 326 |
| Average (kg) | 235.4 |
| Median (kg) | 192.0 |
| Min (kg) | 13.6 |
| Max (kg) | 1060.2 |
| StDev (kg) | 157.3 |
| CV | 105.1 |
Data are entries of complete community and year records expressed as the total weight (kg) of all harvested resources per person in the community.