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sustainable management. To maintain or even enhance these ecosystem services, we must address growing pressures on both their supply and demand, such as land-use changes in watersheds coupled
with increasing human demand for water. Therefore, biophysical understanding and policy mechanisms are crucial in conserving the delivery of desired services. In their assessment of publications related to
ecosystem goods and services EGS, Wong et al. 2015, p. 108 ind that, while a lot of attention has been placed on valuation and identiication, there “has been minimal improvement on understanding the
relationships between ecological mechanisms and ecosystem services to create the realistic end products that managers need.”
Ecosystem services, including in the northern NCRB, include “the beneits to people of terrestrial ecosystem efects on fresh water” Brauman, 2007, 6.6. In order to understand “traditional hydrologic
science into an ecosystem services context, it is useful to focus on four key attributes of each service: quantity, quality, location, and timing of low” Brauman, 2007, 6.23. In addition, external drivers such
as climate change must also be considered, especially in determining anticipated and unanticipated future scenarios.
2.9 Summary
The NCRB is the third largest watershed in North America, conveying water from a drainage area of more than 1.4 million km
2
. The Nelson River runs through a landscape that changes from the Great Plains and Prairies Upper Nelson, to the Boreal Shield and Hudson Bay Lowlands Lower Nelson.
The Churchill River originates in the Boreal Plain and Boreal Shield ecozones, and runs through the Taiga Shield until it reaches the low-relief Hudson Plain. Flow of the Churchill River is strongly
determined by the granite issures and glacial morphology of the shield.
The region’s air temperature averages range from 16.4°C in summer to -12.0°C in winter with an annual mean of 2.3°C. Precipitation in the basin varies seasonally, and most of the precipitation occurs
during the warm summer months. Climate change is predicted to have strong impact on temperatures in the basin, particularly the northern-most regions. Recent climate models show that the NCRB will
experience warming primarily during the winter months October to April, reducing snow cover and thus exposing permafrost to greater atmospheric heat luxes. This loss, when coupled with predicted
reduction in soil moisture due to increased temperatures, can increase carbon dioxide luxes from the soil and participate in a climate feedback efect alongside much of the current ground ice-afected Arctic
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2005.
According to the 2011 population census, the Nelson-Churchill basin is inhabited by 37,215 people, an increase of +2.32 per cent from the 2006 census, the majority of whom are Indigenous. Thus 3.08
per cent of Manitoba’s population lives in an area that covers about 31 per cent of the province’s land. Distribution of the population is discontinuous—issues surrounding transportation and remoteness from
major centres preclude a smoother urbanrural distribution.
The Nelson-Churchill region is very rich with natural resources, with more than 65 per cent of the land cover in forested areas and wetlands. Forestry, mining, tourism, commercial isheries, hydroelectric
development and subsistence activities are major socioeconomic drivers in the region.
The hydrologic regime of the NCRB is very complex and is heavily inluenced by hydroelectricity generation and related development in the region, as well as the impacts of climate change. Many studies
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have been carried out to identify the speciic impacts of the alteration on the regime to the ecosystem. However, most of these studies have been carried out at smaller scales without looking at implications for
the whole basin as an integrated system, which is critical to developing basin-management strategies.
The northern NCRB provides a wide range of vital ecosystem services that contribute signiicant amounts to the region’s economy—and considerably to the provincial, national and global economies.
The basin’s ecosystems supply numerous provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services due to its various resources uses, which range from forests and mining to large-scale hydropower generation.
Therefore, it is necessary to understand these ecosystem services as a function of integrated watershed management, which requires a good understanding of the biophysical characteristics of the basin and
suitable policy mechanisms speciically tailored to the basin.
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3.0 Toward an Integrated
