Published Jul 18, 2023 The expansion of the Port of Nome has left many residents with questions about how the region will change. The impending development project also offers an attractive case study for researchers who want to understand the impacts of increased cruise ship tourism in the Arctic.
“It’s hard to imagine several thousand cruise ship passengers on Front Street, but when the port gets built, they will come,” says Jim Powell, a researcher at the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau.
Powell has been in Nome this summer along with several researchers from other institutions to gather data. They want to learn about community impacts—both positive and negative—from cruise ship tourism, infrastructure projects, shipping and climate change.
Rather than descending on the town separately and treading much of the same ground, the researchers established a Nome Research Consortium. The group involves five different universities and four different projects, some of which are funded by the National Science Foundation. The consortium is intended to help the researchers coordinate their field work, share information and reduce the burden on community members.
This work on Nome is only just beginning, and while the analysis will likely take months, if not years, to be published, the researchers can for now offer some lessons they’ve learned from other cities.
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