Landscape 4- Northwestern Canada

LANDSCAPE OVERVIEW

Climate change is impacting NW Canada faster than any other place around the world, with rapid warming leading to both biophysical and social impacts. Due to the high costs of store-bought food, the food system in the Northwest Territories is reliant on country foods (locally gathered food). However, harvesters are finding it increasingly difficult to traverse landscapes or water corridors to access food. Warmer conditions increased nutrient availability, and longer growing seasons have the potential to increase local food production, which might help to offset high food prices and decrease the safety risks experienced by harvesters. In the future, farmers may be able to cultivate areas that were not suitable for farming under previous climate and soil drainage conditions. This potential may be further accentuated by technological innovation such as fast-maturing commodity crops that can increase productivity in new arable lands. However, these opportunities likely come at the cost of trade-offs with other ecosystem services. In particular, land use changes that result in an increase in provisioning ecosystem services may lead to a loss of biodiversity, increased carbon emissions from newly ploughed land, and a reduction in cultural values ecosystem services.

CHALLENGES FACING CANADA'S NORTHWEST

Ultimately, we hope to develop tools that will allow communities in the Northwestern Canada to think about sustainable management for food production plus a range of other ecosystem services.
We must develop tools to assess tradeoffs between food production from new land and the potentially negative environmental impacts that may arise from land use change.

New opportunities for local or regional food production must not undermine the cultural values of the region.
We need to develop culturally appropriate and sustainable infrastructure that will help connect the region with other parts of Canada.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Identify and monitor how ecosystem services may change under different scenarios of northern food production.
Model future opportunities across a range of future climate and policy scenarios.
Conduct empirical and modeling studies aimed at minimizing the trade-offs between food production and other ecosystem services.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

Recommendations of best management practices that balance food production with other ecosystem services such as the preservation of soil carbon and nitrogen stocks, and other ecosystem services as guided by broader ResNet efforts.
NWT practitioners will be connected to policy-makers of climate smart agricultural practices in other parts of the country to ultimately understand how those practices could be modified to work in the Canadian northwest.
Required tools could be created for local communities to consider a new food system that incorporates local agriculture, with the overarching goal of improving provision of multiple system services for Northwestern communities.
Local people will start to produce fresh, nutrient-rich food locally which may help address the high rate of food insecurity in the region.
A series of briefing notes and white papers will be created to ensure that the results of this work have maximum impact.

RESEARCH PLAN

Our research plan centers on iterative data collection and an interdisciplinary modelling approach to fill key knowledge gaps, combined with workshops to take existing and new data and model ecosystem services’ relationships including likely trade-offs.

Enhance soil database in relation to ES
Identify, monitor, and model ES related to agriculture in the Northwestern region under a range of future climate and policy scenarios.
Identify and model ES management pathways and policy options
Establish monitoring program to minimize tradeoffs between food production and other ES