NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Principal Investigator: Koster, Kajar
Licensed Year(s): 2018 2015
Summary: The aim of this project is to study the short term and long term effects of different fire intensities on the decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) in northern boreal forests under changing fire regimes. The objectives are to: 1) explore the short and long term effects of forest fires with different intensity on above- and belowground biomasses; 2) explore changes in albedo, snow depths an...

Principal Investigator: Errington, Ruth
Licensed Year(s): 2018
Summary: After 10 years of warming climate conditions, the Canadian Fire Service is leading a field project to re-measure a series of permanent monitoring plots to identify any changes to the forest stand structure, tree growth rates, plant community composition, tree, shrub, herb, and lichen biomass. These changes will be associated with climate trends and environmental factors such as soil type, presence...

Principal Investigator: Pisaric, Michael FJ
Licensed Year(s): 2019 2018 2017 2016
Summary: The objectives of this research are to examine the frequency and severity of past wildfire and drought (drought-like) conditions in the southern Northwest Territories. Specifically, the research team will examine the following questions: 1) how frequent and severe have fires been in the past; 2) are fires becoming more frequent/severe due to the impacts of climate change; 3) what impact does wildf...

Principal Investigator: Olefeldt, David
Licensed Year(s): 2017 2016 2015
Summary: The project team intend to study carbon cycling in peatland catchments, in order to determine whether the interactions between wildfire and permafrost thaw causes increased release of greenhouse gases from peatlands and aquatic ecosystems to the atmosphere, and thus cause amplified climate change. Given the overall objective of the project, the team intend to address five research questions: ...

Principal Investigator: Spicer, Neal
Licensed Year(s): 2017
Summary: The Objectives of this research are to: 1) determine where the participating communities obtain their drinking water from within their home and while on the land and why; and determine the areas of each region that are considered valuable and important areas of water quality; and 2) determine what the concerns are concerning the sources of water, both within the homes and natural water sources, ...

Principal Investigator: Menounos, Brian p
Licensed Year(s): 2017 2016
Summary: The objective of the study is to date the formation of terminal moraines fronting Brintnell Glacier, and analyze the glacigenic signature within the sediments of Glacier Lake in order to develop a robust chronology of glacier change on the Brintnell-Bologna Icefield. This decade to century scale chronology will be compared to regional-to-hemispheric climate proxies to evaluate the climate sensitiv...

Principal Investigator: Lewkowicz, Antoni G
Licensed Year(s): 2018 2017 2016
Summary: The goal of this project is to look at how permafrost is changing following forest fire over a range of environmental conditions, with the purpose of improving how change is modeled in the future. The fires of 2014 in the southwestern Northwest Territories (NWT) provide an opportunity to examine how discontinuous permafrost responds to disturbances. This work is being carried out in collaboration ...

Principal Investigator: Smith, Sharon S
Licensed Year(s): 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006
Summary: This project combines the ongoing monitoring program of the same title (Permafrost monitoring and collection of baseline terrain information in the Mackenzie Valley Corridor, NWT) and the activities previously undertaken by the project title, “Active Layer Monitoring Network in the Mackenzie Valley”. The objectives of this study are to provide baseline knowledge of permafrost and terrain condit...

Principal Investigator: Stern, Gary
Licensed Year(s): 2012
Summary: The objective of this study is to collect fish from lakes and tributary rivers of lakes under fish (mercury) consumption advisories and compare with older data from government if available (DFO, Environment Canada), and to collect and analyse sediment cores from these lakes to see how lake ecosystem changes relate to fish mercury levels. There are two main methods involved in this work. For fis...

Principal Investigator: Turetsky, Merritt R.
Licensed Year(s): 2011
Summary: The goal of this research project is to measure the concentration and composition of natural dissolved organic carbon in rivers along a latitudinal transect from central Alberta to southern NWT. Data on water quality will be combined with spatial data that describes the drainage basins of the sampled rivers, e.g. ecosystem composition, size, slope, recent fire impact and permafrost conditions. The...