Barren-ground caribou, an ecologically and culturally important species in northern Canada, have been in decline and are threatened in the Northwest Territories (NWT). To improve capacity to explore drivers of caribou declines and test management strategies, the ALCES simulation platform was applied to develop a decision-support tool for five central barren-ground caribou (CBGC) herds (i.e., Bathurst, Bluenose-East, Bluenose-West, Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, and Cape Bathurst). The tool (referred to as CBGC ALCES) allows Renewable Resource Boards, Indigenous governments and Indigenous organizations, as well as the Government of the Northwest Territories to simulate the cumulative effects of climate, wildfire, development, and management practices on the habitat quality and population dynamics of these herds. CBGC ALCES has been developed collaboratively with project partners, and Indigenous knowledge is being incorporated through Indigenous knowledge summaries that enable comparison of simulation model behaviour with observations of caribou population change.
Barren-ground caribou are migratory, and CBGC ALCES applies five linked seasonal population models to represent unique habitat and mortality risks that differ by season. The spatial population models are linked to landscape simulations so that habitat, fecundity, and mortality risk respond to development, wildfire, and climate change.
CBGC ALCES’s streamlined design is such that users do not require a computer modeling background. Users can import spatial layers identifying planned development projects, which are then combined with existing footprints and future fire and climate dynamics to forecast caribou habitat and mortality risk over the next four decades. Users also have the option of modifying default inputs for fecundity, natural mortality, and harvest. The computationally intensive simulations are completed in the cloud and outputs are presented using the map-based scenario results viewer. Simulations are shared among users to enable collaboration, and outputs can be downloaded as spatial layers and spreadsheets to facilitate subsequent analysis. More information on the tool is available at https://cbgc.alces-flow.com, and a public version of the data viewer is available at https://cbgc.alces-flow.com/public/web/notebooks/voila/render/results_viewer.ipynb. A previous phase of the project is described at https://accwm.com/cea.
The project is funded by the Collaborative Barren-ground Caribou Initiative, a partnership between the NWT Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program (https://www.gov.nt.ca/ecc/en/services/nwt-cumulative-impact-monitoring-program-nwt-cimp) and Polar Knowledge Canada (https://www.canada.ca/en/polar-knowledge.html). This initiative is addressing barren-ground caribou population decline through improved understanding of the drivers of population trends.
