Providing Solutions using Information Technologies

CCSP Project Report on Land-use and Caribou Population Simulation for the Churchill, Berensand Kinloch Caribou Ranges (encompassing Trout Lake, Lac Seul, and Red Lake Forests). This project was funded by the Province on Ontario under the joint Federal-Provincial initiative, the Caribou Conservation Stewardship Program.

This project culminated in the creation of a comprehensive, web-based decision support tool for Boreal caribou management, built on the ALCES Flow simulation platform. The platform brings together up-to-date datasets on landscape composition, climate change trajectories, population vital rates and disturbance regimes. Science advice and support from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, including reports and GIS files from the most recent forest resource inventories and caribou surveys in the study area, ensured that critical information on natural land-cover, anthropogenic footprint and observed recruitment and survivorship estimates, reflected integrated range assessments and forest inventory information. Within ALCES Flow, users can construct and explore a wide variety of land-use, disturbance and wildlife-management scenarios, ranging from forest harvest, wolf control and altered moose harvest rates, and observe their cumulative effects on caribou populations. Analysis of such scenarios can contribute to caribou management from an adaptive management context, where the likelihood of conservation success can be simulated and evaluated before implementation on the ground.

Caribou Conservation Tool – Public Results Viewer. Viewer to create custom reports from the generated landuse and population simulations.

Caribou Conservation Tool – Protected PopDyn and Landuse Simulation Development Tool