Case Study · Northern Dene Nation
Creating a Cumulative Effects Framework
Impact Assessment & Community-Led Stewardship
Communities are often asked to respond to cumulative effects without tools that reflect their own priorities or knowledge systems. A Northern Dene Nation worked with Trailmark to develop a framework that can support cumulative effects assessment and broader decision-making by bringing together spatial information and traditional land use knowledge in a way that remains community-defined and usable over time.
Through workshops and collaborative design, community priorities were translated into practical value components, indicators, and monitoring approaches. Legacy land use surveys were digitized and combined with new harvest and wellness survey data, allowing patterns and changes to be understood across time. The work was then extended into a pilot monitoring program, including mobile data collection for caribou observations.
The result is a living, community-grounded cumulative effects framework supported by organized spatial and land use data, helping guide stewardship, assessment, and long-term decision-making while maintaining community control over how knowledge is stored, accessed, and used.