How climatic variability in Southwest Alaska influences this region’s native subsistence-fishing economies was explored. Field research was conducted in four Yup’ik communities during 2003-2004, and regression analyses were completed comparing climatic data with subsistence (salmon) fishing production over recent decades.

The regression analyses suggest that subsistence fishing production is only weakly related to cardinal climatic variables such as precipitation, temperature, and snowfall. Linear regressions yielded r2 values generally less than 0.2.

Our preliminary results therefore suggest that the subsistence-fishing economies in the Yup’ik communities we studied were little influenced by climatic variations taking place over recent decades. This reaffirms various ethnographers’ claims regarding the conservatism and long-standing resiliency of these economies. On the other hand, it does not suggest that these economies would be resilient to future climatic variability that exceeds the bounds of the climatic conditions they have experienced over recent past decades.

Comprehensive data for stream flows and ice-out dates in this region’s key rivers and streams was not available when this paper was prepared. But once it does become available, which we anticipate will be soon, we plan to also compare it with subsistence-fishing production.

Many scientists believe the socio-economic impacts of significant global climatic change will be especially pronounced in high-latitude regions. If so, we feel this research may ultimately contribute to the development of better fisheries-management policies for people living in high-latitude regions.