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Organized Oral Session

Session: A comparative perspective on integrating ecological forecasting with decision-making

OOS 23-6 - Contributing to caribou land management plans in northern ecosystems while data, models, objectives and the ecosystems are in flux

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

9:15 AM – 9:30 AM EDT

Location: 520C

Presenting Author(s)

EM

Eliot McIntire

Natural Resources Canada

Co-author(s)

EM

Eliot McIntire

Natural Resources Canada
TM

Tati Micheletti

University of British Columbia
CB

Ceres Barros

University of British Columbia, Canada
FS

Frances Stewart, PhD

Assistant Professor
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
IE

Ian Eddy

Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Canada
CB

Celine Boisvenue

Natural Resources Canada
JT

Junior A. Tremblay

Wildlife Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada
ML

Mathieu Leblond

Research scientist
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
AC

Alex M. Chubaty, PhD

Modeller
FOR-CAST Research & Analytics, Canada
SC

Steven G. Cumming

Department of Wood and Forest Sciences, Laval University, Canada
AW

Alana R. Westwood

Dalhousie University
TT

Trevor Teed

Dene Nation
JH

James Hodson

Government of Northwest Territories
SH

Samuel Hache

Canadian Wildlife Service, Canada

Background/Question/Methods

Applied ecological sciences face two major, accelerating challenges: a world with rapid socio-ecological changes and an influx of data and models. Under these conditions, developing ecological forecasts that are sufficiently reliable, responsive and flexible to the needs of rights holders, policy makers, land managers, stakeholders and the public is extremely difficult. It is necessary to develop an ecological forecasting approach that can keep pace with changes to all these variables. Recently, McIntire et al (Ecology Letters, 2022) introduced the PERFICT approach, a clear framework based on nimble yet robust workflows linking management objectives, data, ecological models and results.

Results/Conclusions
To demonstrate this approach, we present the Western Boreal Initiative as a case study. This multi-year ecological forecasting project initially located in the territory of the Dene Nation and other First Peoples (also known as the Northwest Territories, Canada) includes co-production of knowledge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers to support woodland caribou recovery planning. Over the first 2 years of the project, the project objectives, the datasets and the models have frequently been updated or changed; many more such changes are anticipated, exemplifying the need for the PERFICT approach.

Despite forecasts of increased rates of disturbance under climate change, our modelling suggests that caribou populations in the Northwest Territories’ boreal forests could remain stable, in spite of notable changes to habitat. Although several dimensions of this complex issue have not yet been fully woven into our results, our approach allows us to integrate these changes to help bring the most up-to-date data to decisions while enabling the active involvement of all partners. By sharing this approach, we demonstrate some challenges and possible solutions for an applied ecological problem that can be nimble enough for a world under constant flux.