Joan Eamer, Ecosystem Status and Trends Report Secretariat (Environment Canada)

CARMA 6Dec 4 2009

Taiga Cordillera Photo: D. Downing

CARMA & the Ecosystem Status and Trends Report for

Canada (ESTR)

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Context

Measuring Progress Towards the United Nations Biodiversity Target

“to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth”

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Canada’sBiodiversity Outcomes Framework

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Purpose of ESTR

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Measure progress towards the UN 2010 biodiversity target;

Inform national biodiversity agenda, and particularly expansion of conservation thinking to include ecosystem approaches;

Identify strengths & weaknesses of current ecosystem monitoring

Provide a legacy of accessible, integrated, ecosystem information from federal, provincial, territorial, academic sources

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A Federal/Provincial/Territorial Initiative

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2006 decision to proceed, Canadian Councils of Resource Ministers (CCRM)

2007 funded and started Federal/Provincial/Territorial Steering

Committee Secretariat (Environment Canada) Many authors, contributors, reviewers

2008-09 research and writing September 2010 – everything will be done Now

Synthesizing results and extracting key findings

Still completing/reviewing many of the technical ‘building block’ reports

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Ecological Classification for ESTR

Ecological units follow the National Ecological Classification System (NECS) with some changes

3 Arctic ecozones combined

Updated boundaries from ground-truthing

26 EcozonesPlus

15 terrestrial units 9 marine units Great Lakes Urban

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Products

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26 ecozonePlus technical reports

~30 thematic reports & synthesized data sets

Highlights report

Summary for Decision-makers

Key Findings

Evidence for Key Findings 26 ecozone-level reports

Northern caribou report

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Canada’s international

reporting (Arctic Council, CBD)

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Key finding themes

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Ecosystem processes

Habitat and wildlife

Biome trends

Human/ ecosystem interactions

Examples of where CARMA is relevant

•Changes in green-up dates & biomass•Parasites and wildlife disease changes

•Herd population trends•Landscape fragmentation•Disruption of migration corridors

•Changes in the tundra biome

•Stewardship and conservation measures•Climate change impacts on caribou•Ecosystem services: cultural, economic, importance of caribou

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CARMA and Ecosystem Status and Trends Reporting

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Focus is on data – current status and recent trends – not projected impacts

There is a shortage of trend data for ecosystem reporting

What data exist are often hard to find and not synthesized

Good, effective ecosystem assessment needs good population numbers but it also needs data on stressors, drivers, ecosystem linkages

Both inventory and synthesis are needed to tell the story