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Sisters of the Fin: A Nonprofit Start-Up Connecting Women Veterans Through Fishing in AlaskaSisters of the Fin (SOTF) is a prospective nonprofit organization (NPO) startup focusing on connecting women veterans by offering recreational fishing opportunities in Alaska. This SOTF project objective proposed development of a nonprofit organization business plan using research and application of project management principles and Project Management Institute (PMI) PMBOK® Guide Knowledge Areas. In combination with an NPO business plan, a project management plan (PMP), an integrated project schedule, relevant templates, and metrics for project monitoring and control were developed and utilized. The SOTF Project Manager employed selected project management tools and techniques to determine suitability for nonprofit application. Online research revealed a lack of female-focused fishing nonprofits nationwide specifically catering to women veterans. Further investigation of women veteran population demographics revealed a smaller population size could inversely impact nonprofit participation. A questionnaire distributed to women veterans, to gauge perspectives of a recreational fishing nonprofit tailored to them, resulted in positive feedback. Research assessed analogous Alaskan NPO startup feasibility among a large community of diverse nonprofits, especially in recreation services. NPO startup research aligned with defined project deliverables by developing a PMP, assessing risks, managing scope, adding project resources, and producing a narrative guideline which resulted in an informed an persuasive nonprofid business plan.
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Assessing the Transportation Adaptation Options to Sea Level Rise for Safety Enhancement in RITI Communities through a Structured Decision-Making FrameworkThrough a structured decision-making framework, this study aims to better understand the key factors influencing transportation adaptation planning in practice. Qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with various stakeholders were conducted to identify the main concerns, challenges, objectives, tradeoffs, and evaluation variables in transportation adaptation planning. Stakeholders were identified through preliminary interviews with transportation planning experts from the metropolitan planning organization using typical case and snowball sampling methods. Key aspects related to the major concerns, objectives, priorities, adaptation plan evaluations, implementation challenges, and potential conflicts and tradeoffs are identified. Major barriers to adaptation plan development and implementation include lack of resources, competing with more urgent needs, conflicts with other planning objectives, lack of holistic view, working in silos, mismatched and outdated information, uncertainty in future scenarios, and action inertia. To overcome these challenges, we propose 1) more efforts to understand community values, develop strategic goals, and identify their priorities in order to balance the tradeoffs 2) collaboration with other sectors to develop a holistic view of resilience and strategic plans that achieve multiple planning goals 3) collaborate with diverse stakeholders to reduce spatial and temporal information mismatches and to create adaptive plans that can accommodate multiple scenarios with uncertainty 4) conduct community outreach and stakeholder engagement from the beginning to build support, consolidate resources, and eliminate social inertia for plan implementation.
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Hydroclimate Drives Seasonal Riverine Export Across a Gradient of Glacierized High-Latitude Coastal CatchmentsGlacierized coastal catchments of the Gulf of Alaska are undergoing rapid hydrologic fluctuations in response to climate change. These catchments deliver dissolved and suspended inorganic and organic matter to nearshore marine environments, however, these glacierized coastal catchments are relatively understudied and little is known about total solute fluxes to the ocean. We present hydrologic, physical, and geochemical data collected during April-October 2019-2021 from 10 streams along gradients of glacial fed to non-glacial (i.e., precipitation) fed, in one Southcentral and one Southeast Alaska region. Hydrologic data reveal that glaciers have a dominating influence on seasonal runoff patterns. The ẟ18O signature and specific conductance show distinctive seasonal variations in stream water sources between the two study regions apparently due to the large amounts of rain in Southeast Alaska. Total dissolved solids concentrations and yields were elevated in the Southcentral region, due to lithologic influence on dissolved loads. Hydroclimate is the primary driver of the timing of dissolved and suspended yields in both regions of the Gulf of Alaska. We show the yields of dissolved organic carbon is higher and that the δ13CPOC is enriched in the Southeast streams illustrating contrasts in organic carbon export across the Gulf of Alaska. Furthermore, we illustrate how future yields of solutes and sediments to the Gulf of Alaska may change as watersheds evolve from glacial influenced to precipitation dominated. This integrated analysis provides insights into how watershed characteristics beyond glacier coverage control the properties of freshwater inputs to the Gulf of Alaska and the importance of expanding study regions to multiple hydroclimate regimes.
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Marine and not terrestrial resources support nearshore food webs across a gradient of glacial watersheds in the northern Gulf of AlaskaEstuaries are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth, yet are especially at risk in high-latitude regions due to climate-driven effects on the connected terrestrial and marine realms. Warming in these regions exceeds the global average and is a major cause of the rapid melting of glaciers. As a result, the timing and magnitude of freshwater discharge into estuaries are subject to increase during the peak in glacial meltwater, ultimately affecting the riverine flux of nutrients and organic matter (OM) from the land to coastal environments. Intertidal communities near the outflow of rivers often rely on supplementing local (marine) food sources with allochthonous (terrestrial) subsidies, despite the fact that terrestrial OM can be problematic for marine consumers to assimilate. We investigated if terrestrial matter subsidizes nearshore food webs in northern Gulf of Alaska watersheds, and if the relative proportion of terrestrial versus marine OM supporting these food webs differed with watershed glaciation characteristics and with seasonal glacial discharge regimes. We employed a Bayesian stable isotope mixing model to determine the contribution of marine (phytoplankton, particulate OM, macroalgae) and terrestrial (vascular plant) sources to the diets of grazing/detritivore and filter/suspension-feeding coastal invertebrates at the outflows of watersheds of varying glacial influence and across various discharge periods. Additionally, we conducted a distance-based redundancy analysis to investigate the effects of watershed-characteristic sourcing and transport of terrestrial OM on nearshore consumer diets. The diets of both feeding groups were predominantly marine (>90%) and varied little among sites or glacial discharge periods. However, consumers were depleted in ¹³C isotopes with increasing glaciation; the significant watershed descriptors suggest that this change was more associated with discharge effects on marine primary production rather than consumption of terrestrial OM by the invertebrates. These results suggest that, while watershed exports may influence the stable isotope composition of OM sources, the diets of these feeding groups are mostly decoupled from terrestrial influence during the time of sampling. It is possible that marine OM availability in the study system is not limiting, and terrestrial OM subsidies in such productive systems are not needed to support nearshore food webs.
