The Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission final report from the Alaska Legislature was released yesterday.  Follow this link to find a set of commission documents including the final report:

The 124 page report points out the climate change is here, is happening and will have dramatic impacts on teh region people, environment and economy. Of interest to the Reindeer Portal, is the complete absence of reindeer from the report (though changed caribou migration routes are mentioned), even though reindeer husbandry has been in Alaka for over a century.

http://housemajority.org/coms/cli/cli_finalreport_20080301.pdf

Primary threats are identified as being

• Ocean acidification: Approximately 30 percent to 50 percent of human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions are absorbed by the ocean, which -- when coupled with warming seas -- could threaten the ability of crabs and mollusks to form shells, thereby creating dead zones with far-ranging effects on other sea life. (The report advises the state closely monitor ocean pH levels.)

• Thawing permafrost: Rising temperatures pose a special threat to the trans-Alaska pipeline, which was constructed over hundreds of miles of frozen ground. Damage to the pipeline's support structures, the report says, could cost up to $800 million to repair. Melting permafrost could also damage hundreds of miles of roads and the foundations and pipes of thousands of public facilities.

• Subsistence harvests: With temperatures rising faster than anywhere else in the nation, vegetation in Alaska has already begun to change -- and several wildlife species are shifting to new terrain as a result. According to testimony received in northwest Alaska, caribou are drifting farther from villages that were originally located close to migration routes in order to harvest them.

But the most striking climate-change impact of all, the report says, may well be the need to relocate entire coastal villages -- like Newtok, Shishmaref and Kivalina-- due to dramatic reductions in shore-fast sea ice that used to protect them from violent autumn storms.

As many as 162 communities in all could be threatened by erosion and flooding, the report states.

"There is little doubt that Alaskans are feeling the effects of climate change more than anyone else in our nation," the report says, quoting remarks delivered last year by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

In addition to the commission's four legislators (including Rep. Reggie Joule, D-Kotzebue, the vice-chair; Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak; Sen. Gene Therriault, R-Fairbanks; and Samuels -- the panel also included seven public members with expertise in climatology, economics, wildlife, engineering, tourism, resource industries and affected communities.