3.4 Indicators
Value-based indicators are measurable factors with a strong relationship to a value. Value health is tracked by monitoring these indicators. The Parties will develop indicators for Plan values that are relevant, sensitive, accurate, and practical. In the meantime, decision-makers will use two development footprint indicators – surface disturbance and linear feature density – to help monitor value health.
The Plan recommends choosing value-based indicators using the following criteria:
- Relevant: There is a strong and well-understood relationship between value health and the indicator.
- Accurate: The indicator accurately reflects changes in the value at temporal and spatial scales appropriate to the value.
- Sensitive: The indicator responds measurably to stressors and/or mitigations.
- Practical: The indicator can be measured with existing or achievable capacity and resources and is easy to understand.
Relevant doesn’t necessarily mean direct. Indicators can still be useful if they are indirectly related to a value. For example, for Caribou, it is possible to measure an aspect of value health directly – for example, herd size. It is also possible to measure something that affects a value in a predictable way – for example, lichen cover.
Sometimes there are many steps between an indicator and its value – for example, the extent of wildfire affects lichen cover, which affects caribou herd size. These indirect indicators can still be useful if the relationships between them and the value are well understood. However, each step adds complexity and introduces room for error.
The Parties will need to balance efficiency (for example, choosing an indicator related to more than one value, or one that is very easy to measure) against effectiveness (for example, multiple indicators for one value provide a more complete picture than just one, but require more resources).
See Table 4 for examples of potential indicators for Plan values.
| VALUE | POSSIBLE INDICATORS |
|---|---|
| Caribou | Herd size |
| Habitat quality – for example, percent lichen cover | |
| Use of migration pathways | |
| Sustainable Local Economy | Employment rate |
| Average income compared to cost of living | |
| Regional GDP | |
| Community Resilience | Physical and mental health statistics |
| Public infrastructure condition | |
| Emergency preparedness | |
| Income equality | |
| Land–People Relationship | Perception of stewardship ability |
| Harvestable species abundance | |
| Available time to be on the land | |
| Effort required to meet harvest needs |
Development Footprint Indicators
The Plan will eventually include indicators for many values. Initially, it defines two indicators of development footprint that communicate relative acceptability of development intensity and area across the Region’s Landscape Management Units (LMUs): linear feature density and surface disturbance.
Linear feature density (LFD) is the total length of all human-created linear features (that is, roads, seismic lines, trails) as a proportion of area, measured as kilometers of linear features per square kilometers of area (km/km2). It includes only features more than 1.5 m wide due to the satellite image resolution available. Higher linear feature density is often associated with increased habitat fragmentation and increased access. Linear feature density can significantly affect how people and wildlife use the land.
Example: If an LMU with an area of 500 km² has a combined total of 100 km of roads, trails, and cutlines, it has a linear feature density of 0.2 km/km² (100 km / 500 km²).
Surface disturbance (SD) is the percentage of area physically disturbed by human activities. It is constrained by the resolution of available satellite imagery. Common disturbances include tree clearing, vegetation removal, and earth moving. These activities are often carried out during development and/or resource extraction projects – for example, mine sites, quarries, camps, drill and helicopter pads.
The surface disturbance indicator does not include:
- Disturbance from natural events, such as wildfire, flooding, and permafrost thaw (however, human activity that follows a natural disturbance, like logging after a wildfire, is included).
- Tenured or permitted areas that remain undisturbed – for example, an undeveloped placer claim.
- The area of linear features, including roads, trails, and seismic lines (to avoid duplication with linear feature density).
Example: If an LMU with an area of 500 km² has a combined total of 30 km² disturbed by forestry and placer mining activity, and an additional 50 km² has been disturbed by forest fire, it has a surface disturbance of 6% (30 km² / 500 km² x 100).
Note: The area within 30 m from either side of the centreline of the North Klondike, Top of the World, and Dempster highways is excluded from the LMU area used to determine LFD and SD values. This acknowledges the permanence of these features on the landscape. Instead, access management directions (Section 4) apply in these areas.
Improvements
These indicators were chosen for practicality, their relationships to many of the Region’s values, and consistency with earlier Yukon regional plans. However, thresholds and land use designation definitions are Plan-specific.
How effective are the development footprint indicators?
- Relevant? Somewhat: Indicators relate to multiple values, but the relationships are not well understood.
- Accurate? Needs work: Appropriate scale varies by value, so broad indicators are not particularly well-suited to any one value.
- Sensitive? Somewhat: New disturbance on the ground is visible immediately to satellite, but sensitivity will depend on how often images are taken, and purchased, and how long it takes to analyze and publish data.
- Practical? Very: Indicators can be measured with existing technology and capacity (satellite imagery), are easy to understand, and ready to be used immediately. They can also be easily and explicitly linked to permitting under existing regulations, which provides certainty.
Development footprint indicators will be more effective if they become more relevant and accurate with respect to Plan values. Adapting cumulative effects management holistically means deciding where it makes sense to improve existing indicators, and where new indicators that better meet the criteria should be added.
Potential improvements include:
- Differentiating the type, timing, and intensity of activities where disturbance has occurred.
- Differentiating linear features by width or classes of width.
- Measuring indicators at finer scales than LMU to better understand the distribution of disturbance relative to values on the landscape – for example, within certain habitats required by key species of wildlife.
- Considering the zone of influence (the extent of effects beyond the actual footprint of activity or disturbance; this is value-specific).
- Considering development footprint in combination with natural disturbances. Natural disturbances can have enormous impacts on values, especially when exacerbated by or in addition to human-caused disturbance. For example, fire is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but fire intensity and frequency are being influenced by humans through activities that affect ecosystem functions and through climate change.
Implementation Actions
- Improve development footprint indicators to make them more relevant and accurate with respect to Plan values.
- Add value-based indicators related to natural disturbance to the cumulative effects management regime. These indicators will complement development footprint indicators, which account for human-caused disturbance.
- Revise development footprint thresholds and/or the indicators themselves as understanding of the combined impacts of natural and human-caused disturbance improves.
Knowledge Gaps
- Relationships between value health and natural disturbance, and between value health and combined natural and human-caused disturbance, are not well characterized. Undertake research to establish quantitative or qualitative relationships that can support indicator and threshold establishment, and that take natural disturbance on the landscape into account.
