Fig. 4. Social-ecological thresholds of Cree livelihood in the context of increasing resource development. The total value from land use, whether resource development or traditional harvesting, in the Treaty #8 region is represented on the y axis. A conceptual timeline is shown on the x axis. (a) Since the signing of Treaty #8 in 1899, lands have increasingly been alienated away from traditional uses of hunting, fishing, trapping, and related harvesting activities and have been “taken up” (as described in the language of the Treaty) for other uses defined by the state. The heuristic suggests that traditional land use patterns may have been relatively noncompetitive with resource development during the early period of settlement (b-c). However, the capacity of harvesters to sustain such a traditional livelihood was inevitably surpassed (d) with increased development and impacts on resource availability (RAV), which is defined here as a function of resource quality (RQ), physical and institutional access (RAC), with feedbacks on the capacity, i.e., knowledge and skills, for resource harvesting (CRH; c-e). F = RAV (RAB, RQ, RACP, RACI), (CRH).