Cumulative Environmental Impacts in the Gwich’in Cultural Landscape

• Published in: Sustainability
• Main Authors: Proverbs, Tracey Angela, Lantz, Trevor C., Gwich'in Tribal Concil Department of Cultural Heritage
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Sustainability 2020
• Subjects: cumulative impact assessment; cultural landscape; cultural feature; spatial overlay analysis; Canadian subarctic; Gwich'in; Canada; Gwich’in; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/11924; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114667

Environmental changes are impacting northern environments and human communities. Cumulative impact assessments are vital to understanding the combined effects of regional industrial developments and natural disturbances that affect humans and ecosystems. A gap in cumulative impacts literature includes methods to evaluate impacts in cultural landscapes. In this study, we utilized spatial overlay analysis to assess cumulative environmental impacts in the cultural landscape of northern Canada’s Gwich’in Settlement Region. In three analyses, we quantified and mapped: (1) Cultural feature density, (2) cumulative environmental disturbance, and (3) potential overlap between disturbances and cultural features. Our first analysis depicts the extent and pattern of cultural relationships with regional landscapes and illustrates the Gwich’in cultural landscape, with widespread harvesting trails, named places, traditional use areas, and archaeological sites found in highest densities near important waterways. Our second analysis suggests that spatial overlay can track multiple disturbances, illustrating diffuse, lower intensity cumulative environmental impacts. The final analysis shows that overlaying disturbance and cultural feature data provides a novel way to investigate cumulative impacts in a cultural landscape, indicating relatively low levels of potential overlap between Gwich’in cultural features and disturbances. These methods provide one way to investigate cumulative impacts, relevant for well- documented cultural landscapes. This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Tracking Change project (grant number 895-2015-1024), and by the Northern Scientific Training Program. Faculty Reviewed