Resilience and Adaptation: Monitoring Urban Changes in the Context of Risk Exposures, Climate and Societal Changes (Yakutia)
Résumé
Several challenges affect Yakutia territory in the triple context of climate changes, increasing natural risks exposures, and massive urban transformations: metropolisation dynamics in Yakutsk, decreasing of populations in the Arctic settlements, multiple exposures of populations to the flooding, pollution, permafrost melting, etc. If the local populations would implement territorial strategies and develop specific behaviours to the annual flooding for example, the massive transformations of the region of Yakutsk would generate new challenges and impose interdisciplinary approach combining local knowledge, participatory approach, GIS, and remote sensing monitoring. The lack of systematic data as well as monitoring of the fast territorial transformations and urban sprawls has broken the dynamics of resilience and adaptation made before by the local populations in the flooding areas, permafrost risk zones, and polluted spaces. This aspect constitutes a challenge for the sustainability of Yakutsk. The absence of clear scenarios, assessment of potential impacts and consequences of the climate change, territorial dynamics, and societal transformations also threatens sustainability of the city. Approach under development combines three methods: remote sensing monitoring of the urban and territorial transformations, spatial modelling of the gradient of risk exposures, monitoring and modelling of annual or constant geophysical and environmental hazard, and integrates human adaptation strategies and resilience.