Field Courses

Field Courses

Field Courses

Suggested Readings

Sitka Area Reading List and Publications Associated with SSSC

Ruminating on Southeast Alaska: Views on Place, History and Resources
  • Travels in Alaska by John Muir, Entire Book
  • The Island Within, Richard Nelson
  • Between Pacific Tides, Ed Ricketts and Jack Calvin
  • Ricketts Lab, Leopolds Shack. Michael Lanoo
  • Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest by Kathie Durbin, Part 1 King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon by David Montgomery, Chapter 7
  • Book of the Tongass, edited by Carolyn Servid and Donald Snow
  • The Nature of Southeast by Richard Carstenson
  • Where the Sea Breaks its Back
  • Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes
  • The Tlingit Encounter with Photography(2008) by Sharon Gmelch
  • Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban
  • The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth by Charles Wohlforth
  • Fisherman’s Frontier: The People and Salmon of Southeast Alaska by David Arnold
  • Salmon in the Trees, Ray Troll and Amy Gulick
  • Blue Bear: the True Story of Friendship and Discovery, Lynn Schooler
  • Humpbacks: Unveiling the Mysteries, Jim Darling
  • Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska. Jan Straley
  • Pacific Salmon Life Histories, Groot and Margolis
  • Physiological Ecology of Pacific Salmon, Groot and Margolis
  • Alaska’s Salmon Hatcheries, Patricia Roppel
Additional Books You Might Find Interesting
  • The Smell of Other People’s Houses, Bonnie Sue Hitchcock
  • Sea Runner, Ivan Doig
  • The Woman who Married a Bear, John Straley (fiction)
  • The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (fiction)
Videos worth watching

14 mile series: small vignettes about life on island Sitka with 14 miles of road

‘Yáa at Wooné’ – a documentary about Sitka herring and its meaning to the Tlingit people

Eating Alaska: a fascinating documentary about a woman’s search for where her Alaska food comes from

The Salmon Forest Documentary produced by Sitka Conservation Society, USFS and Wild Agency talks about relationship between healthy salmon and healthy forests

Coupled Human-Natural Systems and Sustainability Thinking

Ostrom, E. 2009. A general framework for analyzing social-ecological systems. Science. 325: 419.

Chapin, F. S., et al. 2010. Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 25: 241-249.

Liu, J. et al. 2007. Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science. 317: 1513-1516.

Liu, J. et al. 2007. Coupled human and natural systems. AMBIO. 36: 639-649.

The Wilderness Act of 1964. 16 U.S. C. 1131-1136

Lambin, E. F. et al. 2001. The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths. Global Environmental Change, 11: 261-269.

Naylor et al. 2003. Salmon aquaculture in the Pacific Northwest: A Global industry with local impacts. Environment. October 2003. 45: 18-39.

Holdren, J. 2006. The energy innovation imperative: Addressing oil dependence, climate change and other 21st century energy challenges. Innovations. MIT Press. pp3-23.

Higham, J. and M. Luck. 2007. “Ecotourism: Pondering the paradoxes.” Ch. 7 in Higham, J. ed. Critical Issues in Ecotourism, Oxford: Elsevier Press. pp. 118-129.

Wertheimer, A. 2004. Relationship of size at return with environmental variation, hatchery production, and productivity of wild pink salmon in Prince William Sound, Alaska: does size matter? Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, 14:3 pp. 321-334.