News and Announcements

The Sitka Campus of the University of Alaska Southeast launched a new program in October designed to improve services for its students, particularly those who need extra support for their college experience. ISER’s Center for Alaska Education Policy Research (CAEPR) worked with a team at UAS Sitka to conceptualize the new project, which is called Strengthening Unique Potential for Progress through Opportunities, Relationships, and Transitions (SUPPORT).

Jennifer Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources Management and Policy, presented a fuel treatments database project in October at the Fall Fire Review, an annual event convened by the Alaska Wildland Fire Coordinating Group (AWFCG), the body that oversees fire management in the state.

This election, Alaskans are considering a proposed tax increase on oil production through Ballot Measure 1. Proponents argue that the measure can provide a needed source of revenue as the state faces large deficits and empty bank accounts. Opponents argue that Alaska’s oil industry is under enough pressure from rising costs, low prices, and soft global demand.

Dr. Dayna DeFeo and Dr. Sarah Gerken have begun publishing preliminary findings from studies undertaken in Transforming Introductory Biology at UAA (TIBUAA), a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to help UAA infuse inquiry-based approaches into its undergraduate biology class for non-science majors.

More than 250 participants from around the state and as far away as New Zealand tuned in to the Alaska Common Ground Forum on Ballot Measure 1, held virtually on October 6. Ralph Townsend, Director for the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), provided a short overview of the proposed oil tax initiative before proponents and opponents presented their arguments. In Townsend’s brief summary, he presented highlights of the current production tax, proposed changes, and Department of Revenue estimates of its impacts.

Would you like more information about Ballot Measure 1? If so, are not alone. The “Fair Share Act”, the initiative to change the State of Alaska’s oil production (severance) tax, has many Alaskans puzzled about how oil taxes work now, how the initiative would change how they work, and what issues to think about before voting. The Anchorage Association for Energy Economists (AAEE) and the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), invite you to participate in a live Zoom forum on the ballot measure from 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm, Monday October 12.

“The McKinley Fire: Rebuilding and Lessons Learned” is a joint production of UAA Institute of Social Economic Research, Alaska Center for Energy and Power, and Alaska NSF EPSCoR (National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). The video is part of EPSCoR’s Fire & Ice project, a five-year study of climate-driven changes to Alaska’s coastal margins and boreal wildfires.

UAA Professors Mouhcine Guettabi and Alex James have just published a paper in the journal Resource and Energy Economics entitled “Who benefits from an Oil Boom?  Evidence from a Unique Alaska Data Set.”  The paper applies a statistical approach called the “Synthetic Control Method” to examine the impact of the oil boom that began in 2006 on employment and income for residents and non-residents of the North Slope Borough.  The study uses data from 2000 to 2016. 

On August 21st, Mouhcine Guettabi, Associate Professor of Economics at ISER, and Jonathan King, an Anchorage private business consultant, were interviewed by Lori Townsend on Alaska Insight*, Alaska Public Media’s weekly public affairs program.  That program discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the Alaska economy.  Dr. Guettabi opened the discussion by explaining that employment in Alaska will probably not fully recover by 2022.  Even if a vaccine is developed that ends the business closures and re-opens tourism by summer 2021, Dr. Guettabi projects that employment in the Alaska economy in 2022 will still be 5% below pre-pandemic levels.

A team of Alaska researchers led by ISER’s Tobias Schwoerer has proposed a new methodology to elicit and quantify expert scientific opinion in uncertain environmental applications. The work, which was co-authored with Joseph Little (UAF)  and Gregory Hayward (Alaska Region, US Forest Service), appeared in an article in the Journal of Environmental Management under the title “Quantifying expert opinion with discrete choice models:  Invasive elodea’s influence on Alaska salmonids.”  The new methodology can be used to combine the expert perspectives of many scientists in a way that provides a quantitative measure of which aspects of the problem scientists agree upon and which aspects have less consensus.