ABSTRACT
In Canada, the techniques and methods necessary for measuring cumulative effects have developed slowly despite introduction of the concept in the 1970s when Justice
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 113 The Northern Perspective ....................................................................................... 116
Characteristics of Mineral Resource Extraction in the Northwest Territories ......116 Regulatory and Policy Framework in the Northwest Territories ....................... 117 The Signiœcance of Migratory Barren-Ground Caribou ................................... 118 Ecological Characteristics of Migratory Barren-Ground Caribou .................... 119
Resilience in the Context of Cumulative Effects ................................................... 120 Developing and Demonstrating a Spatially Explicit Demographics Model for Migratory Caribou ............................................................................................ 121
Understanding the Distributional and Avoidance Responses of Caribou .......... 123 Understanding Changes in Abundance of Caribou with an EnergeticsDemographic Model.......................................................................................... 126 Understanding Implications of Landscape and Environmental Changes on Caribou: A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator (ALCES®) .................... 128
Addressing the Cumulative Effects Quagmire-Caribou and Beyond .................. 131 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 132
Berger referred to cumulative effects of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline (Berger 1977). From a regulatory perspective, cumulative effects are the aggregate stresses from past, present, or future human activities on a valued ecosystem component. Although there are other deœnitions-and one might differentiate between cumulative effects and impacts-this is an intuitive concept (Johnson and St-Laurent 2010). Despite this simplicity, application of the concept to resource management and conservation continues to remain a “mystery to most EIA [environmental impact assessment] practitioners” (Duinker and Greig 2006, p. 157). Progress toward effective cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is being questioned, despite having been a requirement for environmental impact assessments in Canada for three decades (Kennett 1999; Dowlatabadi et al. 2004; Duinker and Greig 2006).
