Planning: Comparing Climate Change-Related Vulnerabilities in Greenland and Iceland

This award supports the development of collaborative relationships and future research questions with local communities and institutions in the North Atlantic, where investigators will explore the impacts of environmental change on livestock farming economies. Taking a comparative perspective, the researchers will conduct initial site visits and interviews to evaluate how recent climate shifts have affected local ecosystems, livelihoods, and infrastructure in southern Iceland and southwest Greenland. Research questions include how recent demographic and economic changes are affecting participants and how satellite data analysis may assist local stakeholders to adapt to the effects of climate change. The research team will use preliminary findings as the basis for the development of a future research proposal that responds to the priorities of participating communities. This project uses mixed social science methods, including interviews, focus groups, and site visits. The project will lay the foundation for a future NSF proposal while exploring the use of satellite data to evaluate landscape and vegetation changes with collaborators in Iceland and Greenland and addressing existing data needs in local communities. Plans for dissemination include presentations at professional conferences and to participating communities, a peer-reviewed journal article, and a series of virtual classroom exchanges among students and researchers in the U.S., Iceland, and Greenland. This 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.