Can caribou coexist with human development in Northern Canada? Forecasting land use changes using resource development potential mapping to improve caribou future forecasts.
Creators: name: Micheletti, Tatiane
name: McIntire, Eliot
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Northern ecosystems in Canada are changing at a rate twice as fast as other areas of the globe as a result of climate change (CCCR 2019). Climate change can result in direct effects on wildlife (higher mortality, lower reproduction) but also indirect effects on their habitat through changes in vegetation (e.g. shifts in tree species composition within forests) and natural disturbances like wildfire (e.g. increase in the frequency and size of fires). In addition to climate change, northern ecosystems are affected by human disturbance primarily associated with resource development which includes: forestry, conventional oil and gas development and extraction, mineral mining, wind power, and linear features and road development. Boreal caribou are a species of cultural, economic, and ecological importance in northern regions of Canada. Habitat loss associated with resource development is contributing to boreal caribou decline (Venier et al. 2014, Stewart et al. 2020). Recent evidence in both marine and terrestrial systems suggests that interactions between resource stressors (Mahon et al. 2019) and resource, natural disturbance, and climate stressors (Crain et al. 2008, Brown et al. 2013) can result in complex and unexpected impacts on species. Habitat and population changes for boreal caribou are complicated by potential interactions between resource development, vegetation dynamics, wildfire, and climate. A series of steps can be used to increase our understanding of how local and regional effects can interact to influence the habitat and populations of a species of interest like boreal caribou. Species-habitat-stressor models (e.g. resource selection functions) for caribou can be developed to identify the type (additive or interactive), direction (positive or negative), and magnitude (size) of one or more stressor/resource effects. Species-habitat-stressor models can then be integrated into a population modelling framework to identify how specific stressors (resource activities like pipelines or mine sites) influence specific life stages (calf production, calf survival, adult winter survival) and population rates (reproduction, survival) for caribou. Species population models are critical to understanding how stressors acting on different life stages will affect population-level rates of change (Katzner et al. 2020). Integrating the species population model into a larger modelling platform that simulates into the future the region-wide changes in resource development, climate-sensitive vegetation dynamics, and climate-sensitive wildfire can be used to: (1) understand regional current and future cumulative effects on boreal caribou habitat supply (availability) and population demography; (2) examine different regional resource development scenarios (2% per year versus 5% per year) to assess potential trade-offs between resource development and cumulative effects on boreal caribou. In this presentation, we demonstrate preliminary results for point 1.