Klamath Basin Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change Science Internship
Final Report to the NPLCC and NW Climate Science Center (Agreement #AP01046)
Dates
Date Received
2015-10-02
Summary
The Quartz Valley Indian Reservation (QVIR) partnered with tribes, federal agencies, watershed councils, and higher education institutions in the Klamath Basin for this project during summer of 2014. This project built upon current efforts to integrate western science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) for climate change planning and adaptation in the Klamath Basin. North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC), Northwest Climate Science Center (NW CSC), and additional federal funding from the USDA Forest Service and other federal agencies supported five tribal interns. The internship project was 10-weeks in the summer 2014. The tribal students were college-level from the Klamath Tribes, QVIR, Karuk Tribe, Hoopa [...]
Summary
The Quartz Valley Indian Reservation (QVIR) partnered with tribes, federal agencies, watershed councils, and higher education institutions in the Klamath Basin for this project during summer of 2014. This project built upon current efforts to integrate western science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) for climate change planning and adaptation in the Klamath Basin. North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC), Northwest Climate Science Center (NW CSC), and additional federal funding from the USDA Forest Service and other federal agencies supported five tribal interns. The internship project was 10-weeks in the summer 2014. The tribal students were college-level from the Klamath Tribes, QVIR, Karuk Tribe, Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, and the Yurok Tribe, all federally recognized tribes in the Klamath Basin. The intern program trained students in both, the standard western science as well as traditional ecological knowledge and their application to climate change planning in the Klamath Basin. Students had professional mentors from tribes and federal agencies and gained experience in local and regional environmental monitoring, analysis, management and policy issues related to tribal traditional knowledge and Climate Change. Students were able to have traditional teachings from and worked with tribal elders and cultural resource professionals of their own tribes to understand how TEK may be integrated with western science to inform natural resource and climate related-policy and management in the Klamath Basin.
Major benefits for natural and cultural resource managers was the on the ground project work and the students’ final reports and presentations that described each student’s experience and general findings. Through data collection students addressed questions regarding: fire, drought and forest related effects of climate on tribal traditional foods; aquatic habitat restoration approaches; stream temperature refugia critical to fisheries; and climate effects to tribally value species. This project accomplished having five tribal interns who received professional learning experience in forestry, vegetation, and fuels sampling, fisheries habitat and water quality restoration working with their tribes, watershed councils, and a federal agencies.
