Concept information
Preferred term
ARCTEC
Definition
- Short Title: ARCTEC Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=431 Northern regions are facing unprecedented rates of change from resource extraction, climate change, technological innovation, and population growth. Northern communities and governments wish to plan for the future by understanding changes and applying tools to manage them in an integrated way. The science of cumulative effects theorizes that ecological, social, and economic conditions respond to increasing doses of human-induced changes in ways that can be measured empirically. Dose-response curves provide a scientific framework to unify change measurement across disciplines. By examining responses along a continuum of landscape change, relationships between ecological, economic and social indicators can be developed. These dose-response curves can then be integrated into landscape models to evaluate trade-offs and identify practical options that optimize social, ecological, and economic outcomes. Such models help empower northern governments, aboriginal groups, and communities to understand and accept trade-offs associated with cumulative effects management. We have gathered a team with expertise and a performance record linking economic, social, and ecological responses to intensity of human development in northern communities. Comparative and integrated Arctic case studies will be conducted in Canada in the Southeast Yukon and Labrador. Ecological dose-response curves will be generated for our case study areas by surveying aquatic (water quality, benthic invertebrate and fish) and terrestrial (bird and mammal) communities along gradients of human activity. Social and economic dose-response curves will be generated using interviews to document community preferences along similar land use change gradients. These data will be used to generate predictive relationships between ecological, social and economic indicators and human activity using common dose-response methodologies. Spatial and aspatial cumulative effects models will be used to conduct informed trade-off analyses to illustrate the benefits and liabilities associated with different northern land use trajectories. Implementation schemes that support desired ecological and socio-economic outcomes and reflect existing structures will be developed. Our Canadian methodology is tied to comparative methodologies used by our international partners in Scandinavia and Russia. Through the European Water Directive, Sweden has committed to the collection of trans polar data using the reference condition approach to understand how aquatic communities respond to arctic development (Dr. RK Johnson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). The land use-land cover change project in northern Canada and eastern Russia (ARCTLANDS, Mr. Andrey Petrov EoI 338) will relate historical land use changes to social indicators of community well-being using common methodology, and to biodiversity indicators of ecological sustainability using a similar gradient approach across Scandinavia, eastern Europe and western Russia (Dr. Per Angelstam, Swedish Univ. Agricultural Sciences) . Studies are being undertaken in 70 areas in Finland to understand factors affecting the implementation and social acceptance of laws for conservation of biodiversity across landscapes (Dr. Mikael Hilden, Finnish Environment Institute). Our IPY integrated approach is based upon research we have conducted over the past 2 years under The Working Landscapes: Integrated Ecosystems Management Project of the Northern Ecosystems Initiative (NEI), funded by Environment Canada (see Section 3.1). Comparative analysis between our Canadian and international case studies will be used to understand the: 1) transferability of information on social and ecological impacts between northern regions; 2) extent to which impacts depend on the institutional and legal setting in which they are experienced; and 3) the relationship between resiliency of social and ecological systems and site context. The impact of management variables (e.g., scale of management area, demographic makeup of communities, duration of impacts) on the effectiveness of management systems will also be evaluated. We will leave a legacy of training on data collection and analyses so that northern communities can track outcomes as development progresses. This legacy will be implemented through Yukon College as well as the proposed NWT Environmental Sciences Centre of Excellence (EoI 697) and Legacy Research and Outreach Centre in the Yukon (EoI 700), and through technology transfer with the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (Activity No. 133). Results from our project will assist Northern Communities in developing effective regional resource management systems that take advantage of lessons learned elsewhere, while at the same time being responsive to critical site specific variables and features. The integrated framework provides a baseline of information about ecological and human responses to environmental change that can also be used to assess the impacts of climate driven changes on ecosystem variables. (en)
Broader concept
- A - C (en)
URI
https://gcmd.earthdata.nasa.gov/kms/concept/d5685bd5-8bcf-4d90-8359-a7da87ff7aa2
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