NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region, North Slave Region

Tags: physical sciences, permafrost, forestry, wildfire, tree regeneration

Objective(s): To monitor the recovery of NWT forests following wildfire to better understand post-fire changes on forest composition and ground vegetation and to develop baseline information about proposed forest management areas to support assessment of harvesting impacts on these areas.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5543. This projects two main objectives are to monitor the recovery of NWT forests following wildfire to better understand post-fire changes on forest composition and ground vegetation and to develop baseline information about proposed forest management areas to support assessment of harvesting impacts on these areas. The research team will revisit existing network of forest plots established following the 2014 fires to evaluate recovery of these forests seven years after the fire. This includes remeasurement of seedlings and ground vegetation, collection of vegetation and soil samples, drone surveys to support upscaling of lichen biomass and other forage species measurements, end-of-season permafrost probing, and mapping of downed wood. At eight of these sites, the team will also collect a single, near-surface permafrost core (i.e., short core). The team will also establish new sites in holdover fires. Holdover fires, also called zombie fires or overwintering fires, are becoming more common with changing climate. After the 2014 fire season, many fires overwintered, smouldering in the peat soils, and resulted in reignitions the following spring, earlier than fires would normally start. The team will access 20 of these holdover fires in the summer of 2022. The team will use the existing plot protocol (60 m2 rectangular plot in which burn severity, forest structure, tree and ground vegetation recovery, and soil carbon stocks will be measured) to understand how these holdover fires may differentially impact forest recovery and soil carbon losses compared to single season fires. The team will establish paired plots with one site in the holdover fire and one site in the neigbouring single season fire to allow for this comparison. The research team will complete vegetation surveys in the proposed forest management areas in existing monitoring transects that follow the fire monitoring protocol described above. Vegetation surveys will also be completed in adjacent areas that will not be harvested to serve as unharvested control sites. The team will collect small amount of leaf material from each site for evaluation of pre-harvest nutrient status at the sites. The team will update and repair existing permafrost monitoring instruments and install deep ground temperature monitoring in sites where permafrost conditions may be affected by harvest. Inclusions of NWT stakeholders and communities as active members of the research teams. This project involves direct collaborations with various divisions within Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) including Forest Resources (Oleg Melnik), Fire Management (Matt Coyle), and Wildlife, the Geomatics group (Jurjen van der Sluijs), and the Northwest Territories Geologic Survey (Niels Weiss). All of the field teams will include GNWT staff and/or Indigenous community researchers as active team members, which will ensure an understanding of the methods/protocols being used, inclusion of these individuals in the research activities and decisions, and critical points of contact within communities and governments to ensure awareness of research progress. The team are in discussions with the communities of Kakisa and Behchoko to identify community researchers who will be hired into the teams. The team will provide opportunities for those individuals to be as actively engaged in all stages of the research. Engagement in community and government meetings and on-the-land knowledge sharing events. The research team are committed to participating in both formal and informal knowledge sharing activities throughout the field season and as data analysis and writing advances. The team accomplish this in several ways. First, the field teams spend time in communities and participate in community activities wherever possible thereby developing relationships and learning from community members. Second, the team engage actively in community, regional, and territorial meetings aimed at sharing the research results in these more formal settings. Similarly, the team meet with Territorial and Indigenous governments regularly to provide updates on research activities and advances. Third, the team develop plain language materials to communicate results broadly. These include but are not limited to infographics, digital stories, and reports. Fourth, the team make the data openly available and accessible to the public thereby ensuring access by NWT stakeholders, communities, or future research teams. Finally, through other grants, the team collaborate with communities on on-the-land camps aimed at two -way exchange of knowledge and engagement of Indigenous youth in science. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from June 12, 2023 to October 15, 2023.