From: SRC Winter Newsletter 2016
Eric Lede (pictured above) who hails from Darwin is completing his MA in Geography at the SRC and is supervised by Dr Tristan Pearce with the support of committee member, Dr Graham Ashford.
His journey began in late December 2015 when Eric joined Tristan and his Canadian graduate student team in Vancouver, B.C. for the ArcticNet Annual Scientific meeting. ArcticNet is a Network of Centres of Excellence of Cana-da and brings together Inuit and University scientists from a range of disciplines to study the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. Eric presented a poster of his Masters research ‘Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Multiple Stressors in the Arctic,’ which is co-funded by ArcticNet and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. At the meeting, Eric was elected by his graduate student peers to sit on the ArcticNet Student Association Executive Committee.
Eric's Masters research is part of Project: ‘Community Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change in the Canadian Arctic’ led by Dr Pearce and Dr James Ford, McGill University, Canada. The aim of Eric's research is to examine the role of multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors in adaptation to climate change in the Arctic. This involved living and working with Inuit in the remote hamlet Paulatuk for two months where Eric conducted interviews and participated in daily livelihood activities, including hunting and fishing. Following fieldwork, Eric represented the SRC at the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Planning Workshop in Inuvik, the regional centre in the Western Canadian Arctic.
Eric is currently analysing his data and preparing to return to the Arctic in January 2017 to share his research findings and work together with Inuit research partners to publish his data.