This study explores how dust from the Ekati Diamond Mine potentially affects the availability and quality of forage on the seasonal range of the Bathurst caribou herd. Understanding the effects of dust as a source of ...This study explores how dust from the Ekati Diamond Mine potentially affects the availability and quality of forage on the seasonal range of the Bathurst caribou herd. Understanding the effects of dust as a source of disturbance is important because the Bathurst caribou population has declined by 93% since the middle 1980s and there are reports that caribou in general may avoid mining projects. There are several challenges for quantifying dust impacts: 1) Natural variations (e.g., topography, natural disturbance, and soil pH) may also impact forage availability and quality for caribou. To minimize their masking effect, we stratified survey sites into seven land cover classes and selected the most populous class (i.e., the dwarf shrub) for assessing the impact. 2) Within class variation (e.g., the proportion of area covered by rocks where vascular plants and lichen do not grow) can further skew the analysis. We eliminated this problem by examining only the area not covered by rocks. 3) Coarse and fine suspended particulates have different spatial coverages, chemical compositions, and pH values. Consequently, their impacts on caribou forage can be different. To distinguish their impacts, we sampled two areas: transects from the Misery Haul Road that has been in active use vs. those from a rarely used spur road outside the Misery Camp. We sampled percent vegetation cover, soil pH, and dust on leaves along these transects during the summers of 2015 and 2016. Our results indicated that the amount of dust on leaves in a zone of ~1000 m from the Misery Haul Road was 3 - 9 times than that of background sites. The zone of reduced lichen percent cover was also about 1000 m. In contrast, these road dust-induced changes in caribou forage were not observed for the dust-free transect from the spur road.展开更多
Barren ground caribou are one of the most important natural resources for northern aboriginal peoples in Canada, and their responsible management has been identified as a top priority by northern communities and gover...Barren ground caribou are one of the most important natural resources for northern aboriginal peoples in Canada, and their responsible management has been identified as a top priority by northern communities and governments. This study is aimed to assess the impacts of summer range forage availability and quality on Bathurst caribou’s productivity and abundance. Despite well documented effects of habitat nutrition on individual animal, few studies have been able to link nutrition and population demographics in a quantitative fashion, probably because caribou productivity and abundance could be potentially affected by many factors (e.g., habitat, harvest, predators, diseases/parasites, extreme weather, climate change, industrial development, and pollution), and yet long-term data for many of these factors are not available. By determining the upper envelope curve between summer range indicators and caribou productivity, this study made such assessment possible. Our results indicate that summer range indicators derived from long-term remote sensing time series and climate records can explain 59% of the variation in late-winter calf:cow ratio during 1985 and 2012. As a measure of caribounet productvitiy, the late-winter calf:cow ratio, together with the mortality rate, in turn determined population dynamics.展开更多
文摘This study explores how dust from the Ekati Diamond Mine potentially affects the availability and quality of forage on the seasonal range of the Bathurst caribou herd. Understanding the effects of dust as a source of disturbance is important because the Bathurst caribou population has declined by 93% since the middle 1980s and there are reports that caribou in general may avoid mining projects. There are several challenges for quantifying dust impacts: 1) Natural variations (e.g., topography, natural disturbance, and soil pH) may also impact forage availability and quality for caribou. To minimize their masking effect, we stratified survey sites into seven land cover classes and selected the most populous class (i.e., the dwarf shrub) for assessing the impact. 2) Within class variation (e.g., the proportion of area covered by rocks where vascular plants and lichen do not grow) can further skew the analysis. We eliminated this problem by examining only the area not covered by rocks. 3) Coarse and fine suspended particulates have different spatial coverages, chemical compositions, and pH values. Consequently, their impacts on caribou forage can be different. To distinguish their impacts, we sampled two areas: transects from the Misery Haul Road that has been in active use vs. those from a rarely used spur road outside the Misery Camp. We sampled percent vegetation cover, soil pH, and dust on leaves along these transects during the summers of 2015 and 2016. Our results indicated that the amount of dust on leaves in a zone of ~1000 m from the Misery Haul Road was 3 - 9 times than that of background sites. The zone of reduced lichen percent cover was also about 1000 m. In contrast, these road dust-induced changes in caribou forage were not observed for the dust-free transect from the spur road.
文摘Barren ground caribou are one of the most important natural resources for northern aboriginal peoples in Canada, and their responsible management has been identified as a top priority by northern communities and governments. This study is aimed to assess the impacts of summer range forage availability and quality on Bathurst caribou’s productivity and abundance. Despite well documented effects of habitat nutrition on individual animal, few studies have been able to link nutrition and population demographics in a quantitative fashion, probably because caribou productivity and abundance could be potentially affected by many factors (e.g., habitat, harvest, predators, diseases/parasites, extreme weather, climate change, industrial development, and pollution), and yet long-term data for many of these factors are not available. By determining the upper envelope curve between summer range indicators and caribou productivity, this study made such assessment possible. Our results indicate that summer range indicators derived from long-term remote sensing time series and climate records can explain 59% of the variation in late-winter calf:cow ratio during 1985 and 2012. As a measure of caribounet productvitiy, the late-winter calf:cow ratio, together with the mortality rate, in turn determined population dynamics.
