This resource is available on an external database and may require a paid subscription to access it. It is included on the CCLM to support our goal of capturing and sharing the breadth of all available knowledge pertaining to Boreal Caribou, Wetlands, and Land Management.
Boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are designated as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. A Recovery Strategy for the boreal population of caribou identified critical habitat for all but 1 of 51 caribou ranges – Saskatchewan’s Boreal Shield (SK1). The strategy identified 65% undisturbed habitat as the threshold below which a local population was not likely to be self-sustaining. Disturbance was measured as the combined effects of fires <40 years and anthropogenic land use. The fire component of the total disturbance model used fire polygons that were delineated using traditional mapping methods. Our study maps fire from 1988–2013 using the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio analysis of Landsat Thematic mapper and Operational Land Imager. Annual burned areas based on fire perimeters were similar between traditionally and Landsat-derived inventory approaches, but the traditional methods overestimated within-burn areas by 31.8%, as a result of including post-fire residuals and water bodies as burned. The federal recovery model assumes that all lands within provincial fire polygons (<40 years) are inadequate as caribou habitat, and ignores the potential value of post-fire residuals and water bodies as habitat. For some Boreal Shield ranges including SKI, where fire comprises the majority of the total disturbance and residual patches are abundant, total disturbance calculations, critical habitat designation and range planning decisions should take into account residuals, including water bodies.