Planning for a Changing Landscape

Today’s rapidly changing climate is adding new pressures to an already limited supply of developable land, as shifts in permafrost, precipitation, sea ice, drainage, and coastal conditions alter how the land behaves.

Planning for growth means understanding these changes together rather than in isolation. By examining how environmental conditions interact and compound, the project is building a clearer picture of where change may create challenges for infrastructure, access, and future development, and what that means for the community’s long-term growth.

Community Knowledge as Evidence

Environmental datasets tell only part of the story. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit and lived experience provide detailed knowledge of how the land, water, ice, and weather have changed over time including conditions that may not yet appear in conventional datasets.

Through two phases of engagement, community members, Elders, land users, Hamlet staff, infrastructure operators, and other local representatives shared observations that were spatially connected to the land through mapping. This knowledge helps identify emerging hazards, understand relationships between environmental systems, and validate or challenge findings from scientific and geospatial data.

Understanding the Data Landscape

Working in a data-scarce northern context means understanding not only what information exists, but how confidently it can be used.

The project reviewed available information across climate, permafrost, terrain, hydrology, cryosphere, coastal processes, mass movement, infrastructure, and community knowledge. A structured Data Catalogue was developed to organize these sources, connect them to specific susceptibility variables, identify their level of confidence, and pinpoint where additional investigation is needed.

Rather than allowing missing or coarse data to halt the planning process, the framework identifies where new fieldwork, monitoring, remote sensing, or community knowledge can have the greatest valuecreating a system that can be refined as new information becomes available.

What Comes Next?

This first phase lays the groundwork for moving from understanding environmental change to applying it directly to land use and planning decisions in Pangnirtung.

The next phase will fill priority data gaps through targeted field investigations, remote sensing, climate projections, and continued integration of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ). This information will support Composite Susceptibility and Land Development Suitability (LDS) mapping, bringing multiple environmental conditions together to identify where land may be suitable, conditionally suitable, or unsuitable for different forms of development.

Over time, these tools can be integrated into Pangnirtung’s broader planning framework, from the Official Plan and Zoning By-law to development review, infrastructure standards, and decisions about community expansion. Designed to evolve as new data and community knowledge become available, the approach provides a long-term foundation for climate-informed planning.