Real-time Monitoring of Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation of Inuit Hunters: The Iqaluit Land-use Mapping Project

Climate change is altering the physical, ecological and climatic conditions of northern Canada. The increasingly unpredictable nature of these environmental factors, coupled with broader socio-economic changes, is affecting the land-use of Inuit hunters. The Iqaluit Land-Use Mapping Project (ILMP) seeks to identify, spatialize and monitor the adaptive capacity and vulnerability of Inuit hunters via a holistic appraisal of their behavioral responses to changing conditions. Since December 2007, three experienced occupational hunters have carried Global Positioning System (GPS) units during their hunting trips, enabling the research team to compile detailed maps of the participants' hunting routes. In addition, the hunters have articulated their observations of landscape and biotic anomalies during post-hunt semi-structured interviews. GPS tracking data and interviews have been synthesized into maps detailing hunting route deviations as well as the conditions necessitating route alterations. The project's combination of scientific monitoring techniques and Inuit knowledge (IK) is helping to elucidate the changing adaptive capacity and vulnerabilities of Inuit hunters to climate change in the Iqaluit region of Baffin Island. Moreover, by documenting the extent of contemporary seasonal land use activities by some of the most active Iqaluit hunters, the project is providing data that will be valuable in developing regional land use plans for the South Baffin.