NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region

Tags: physical sciences, climate change, discontinuous permafrost, peatlands, lakes

Objective(s): Understand and predict how lakes in discontinuous permafrost peatlands are changing in response to climate warming and loss of permafrost.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5468. The goal of this project is to understand and predict how lakes in discontinuous permafrost peatlands are changing in response to climate warming and loss of permafrost. The field activities for 2023 will focus on three regions/objectives: Inferring long-term environmental change in the Five Fish Lakes (Lue Túé Sulái) – The research team will collect short (~30-50 cm) sediment cores from Ezáa Lue Túe (Ekali Lake), Tl’onie Túé (Sanguez Lake), Tlitetii (Gargan Lake), Dechi Ná?a (Deep Lake) and Tthets’éhk’e’ (McGill Lake) near Jean Marie River. Sediment cores record a history of environmental change that can be read by analyzing chemical and biological fossils that preserve in the sediments. The team will use a gravity core with a diameter of 8.6 cm to collect the sediments, using the winter lake ice as a stable platform to collect the cores. The coring methods are non-destructive and take ~1 hour per lake to complete. The research ream will request community members from Jean Marie River to assist with accessing and coring the lakes. The sediment cores collected will record the last ~300-500 years of the lakes’ histories. The team will analyze cores to track changes in lake dissolved organic carbon, mercury, and phytoplankton communities. Climate change implications for algal blooms in Trout Lake - This project will mobilize and expand upon existing monitoring and research in the Trout Lake watershed. Dehcho-AAROM (Aboriginal Aquatics Resource and Oceans Management) deploys continuous data loggers at 3 locations in Trout Lake to monitor water temperatures and other water quality parameters. The team will analyze long-term trends in the data and deploy additional loggers in areas of Trout Lake they predict will have the potential to act as hotspots for algal bloom formation. The team will perform water quality and phytoplankton community monitoring routinely over the open-water season and will provide Sambaa K’e with phytoplankton kits to sample and preserve any bloom events that may occur in between the regular samplings. The team will work within an existing community-based mapping program to add capacity for recording and geolocating bloom events. The team will collect water samples from Trout Lake tributaries being monitored for permafrost thaw and have them analyzed for routine water chemistry parameters at the Taiga Environmental Lab in Yellowknife. Shallow lakes as recorders of post-wildfire landscape succession – This project will study small, shallow lakes at or near the Scotty Creek Research Station as sentinels of short- and long-term landscape changes following wildfire. The research team will conduct long-term ecological research on water chemistry, plankton communities, and lake physical parameters (light, temperature) in 5-10 small, shallow lakes the team previously sampled in 2019. The team plan to begin these activities in the summer of 2023, but this is dependent on whether the Scotty Creek Research Station will be ready to host researchers. The team may need to scale back the activities or delay until summer 2024, and will make decisions on fieldwork plans in consultation with the Li´i´dli?i? Ku´e´ First Nation. In winter of 2024, the team plan to collect long sediment cores spanning thousands of years to reconstruct past forest fire events using charcoal macrofossils in the sediments and study subsequent changes in the land and water using biomarkers (chemical fossils) and aquatic biological fossils preserved in sediments. The research team designed the research objectives and activities at the Five Fish Lakes in partnership Jean Marie River, and the research objectives activities at Trout Lake in partnership with Sambaa K’e. Dr. Korosi is a member of the Scotty Creek Working Group, established in October 2022, which helps coordinate research activities at the Scotty Creek Research Station and acts as an advisory council to the Li´i´dli?i? Ku´e´ First Nation. The research team will seek the assistance (and provide training when needed) to Dehcho Guardians to help carry out our fieldwork activities. Results will be communicated through community meetings, plain language reports, story maps, and participation in on-the-land workshops and other outreach activities organized through the Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost. Data will be uploaded to the NWT Discovery Portal and Mackenzie Datastream and copies of all publications will be provided to stakeholders and community partners. Data will be co-owned with the Liidklii Kue First Nation, Jean Marie River First Nation, and Sambaa K’e First Nation. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from April 20, 2023 to June 30, 2023.