Mackenzie Basin Impact Study (MBIS)

The Mackenzie Basin Impact Study (MBIS) has been a six-year collaborative research effort, led by Dr. Stewart Cohen of the Environmental Adaptation Research Group, to assess the potential impacts of climate change scenarios on the Mackenzie Basin region of northwestern Canada. This area has experienced a warming of about 1.5°C this century. Projections from General Circulation Models (GCM) of the atmosphere indicate that if greenhouse gas concentrations (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) reach a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution levels, northwest Canada would warm by 4°C to 5°C by the middle of the 21st century. What would the impacts of this projected warming be?

MBIS was designed to be an integrated regional assessment of scenarios of climate warming in which information from many research disciplines would be combined with stakeholder knowledge to provide a more complete picture of a climate change scenario in this region. Initiated by Environment Canada in 1990, with funded research commencing in 1991, the MBIS attracted participants from governments, universities, communities and the private sector. Proceedings from the MBIS Final Workshop, held May 5-8, 1996 in Yellowknife, have recently been published by Environment Canada as the MBIS Final Report.

One theme that has clearly emerged in the MBIS is that climate is a complex agent of change. This impacts scenario includes increased frequency of landslides due to permafrost thaw, reductions in annual minimum river and lake levels, increases in forest fires, shifts in wetland ecosystems, and reductions in yield from softwoods. These impacts could offset potential benefits from a longer growing and ice-free season. Regional stakeholders, including provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal organizations and the private sector, felt confident about their abilities to adapt, so long as climate change would be predictable and gradual. Some potential impacts, however, could be very significant for renewable resources and aboriginal communities.

A map of the Mackenzie Basin developed for the MBIS project is available.