NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region

Tags: physical sciences, resource management, economic baseline, driftwood

Objective(s): The research team intends to develop a computer model that can be used to carry out calculations of economic value of small-scale driftwood harvesting to communities. Culturally, northern peoples have long used driftwood found along northern flowing rivers and on the shores of Arctic Islands. More recently, steamboats used driftwood for fuel (the amount of driftwood used is unknown). Ecologically, the value of driftwood is not well studied, so the consequence of driftwood removal is unclear. Economically, there is increasing interest in this driftwood because of rapid community development and because the expanding petroleum industry will require large quantities of bolts for temporary support of pipe and for large quantities of wood chips for pipeline insulation. If riverside forests are cleared upriver or the driftwood inventory is removed upriver, the lower communities will lose this annual supply of wood and suffer economic hardship. The general objective of this research is to quantify the temporal budget and to test hypotheses for production, movement, decomposition and use of driftwood logs along the major rivers in the Gwich'in Settlement area.

Project Description: Methods include surveys of community elders to understand how driftwood is harvested and how many logs were harvested historically and at present. Remote sensing techniques will be used to quantify the inventory of riverside trees, the rates of bank erosion and the inventory of logs on the riverbanks. Rates of log movements will be estimated using river hydrology data and mark-recapture approaches. Field sampling will be used to estimate rates of decomposition of the logs. For the forest productivity, delta spruce sites will be sampled for growth rates. All of the above data will be used to build the model of driftwood changes over time and space. No destructive sampling will be carried out. Sampling will include dead logs that accumulated on the shores and driftwood logs from the delta rivers and creeks. These logs will not be removed but only discs will be sampled for further analysis. As the base location of the team will be the RWED bunkhouse, no camp sites will be used in the delta, except of existing camps such as the RWED cabin at Jackfish Creek. Boat and helicopter transportation will be used.