CARMA’s approach for the collaborative and inter-disciplinary assessment of cumulative effects

Abstract

32 (1), 2012 This journal is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License Editor in Chief: Birgitta Ahman, Technical Editor Eva Wiklund and Graphic Design: Bertil Larsson, www.rangifer.no Introduction One of the most frequent concerns about the future of migratory tundra caribou, Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus or granti, are the impacts of the cumulative e"ects of changing climate and land-use activities across herd’s ranges. Assessing cumulative e"ects is typically a requirement in environmental assessment of industrial developments but policy and technical limitations have hindered development of assessment methods (Duinker & Greig, 2006). Johnson & St.-Laurent (2011) commented on the lack of a methodological framework as one of the reasons for slow progress on cumulative e"ects. #ey suggested a framework based on the scaling from individual to population, the relative frequency, and magnitudes of e"ects and their regulation. We know quite a bit about individual caribou responses to human activities – interruptions to foraging and displacement of individuals at various distances from the disturbance (Aastrup, 2000; Cameron et al., 2005; Boulanger et al., 2012). However, to scale up from the behavioral responses of individual caribou to the population scale (Johnson & St.-Laurent, 2011) requires baseline information on the ‘state’ of the individual and population giving consideration to, for example, climate, population density, and genetic structure. At both the individual and population scale, we also have to consider environmental in$uences, especially weather and climate, which will be additive or compensatory to impacts imposed by human activities. To scale up the individual’s behavioral responses to the population requires being able to estimate the costs to the individual and whether those costs will a"ect its reproduction and survival. Estimating the costs of a behavioral response is not straight forward; as well as the energy costs of movement and interruption in foraging time, there may also be an e"ect on diet (energy protein intake) if a displacement puts the individual in a di"erent habitat. Understanding and integrating those relationships between behavior, habitat selection, energy and protein intake relative to reproduction and surRangifer, 33, Special Issue No. 21, 2013: 161–166 13 Arctic Ungulate Conference Yellowknife, Canada 22-26 August, 2011