NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: physical sciences, climate change, carbon fluxes, ecology, water fluxes

Objective(s): To shed light on how tall shrub encroachment affects vegetation composition, structure, and diversity and associated surface-atmosphere interactions across scales in the ISR. Leveraging ‘nested’ tundra flux measurements made with eddy covariance and different chamber techniques, we propose to collect ultra-high (mm) resolution drone imagery over the terrestrial-aquatic landscape to identify and measure individual plants and map plant communities and land cover (incl. streams and lakes) using artificial intelligence methods. The resulting maps will be used for upscaling and to calculate the relative flux contributions of plant communities (~plot) and land cover types (~ecosystem) to the total fluxes (~landscape) with a flux footprint model.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5536. The project brings together expertise from historically separated knowledge systems and scientific communities, integrating Indigenous perspectives with atmospheric biogeosciences, ecology, airborne remote sensing, and computer science. The project builds on the collective desire to engage community members in knowledge co-creation and co-management to improve understanding of environmental, economic, and social climate change impacts and support ecosystem resilience towards a self-determined and sustainable Canadian North. Focusing on two long-term research sites in the ISR, Trail Valley Creek and Havikpak Creek, our five objectives (O1 to O5) are to quantify net CO2 and CH4 exchanges across scales and examine the scale-dependency of their abiotic and biotic controls at both sites (O1), develop drone imagery-derived plant community and land cover maps at increasingly coarser resolutions across the footprint of the nested tundra flux measurement set-up at Trail Valley Creek (O2), upscale net CO2 and CH4 exchanges from plot to landscape using drone imagery-derived maps (O3), resolve the spatial heterogeneity in flux contributions to landscape net CO2 and CH4 exchanges using the drone imagery-derived maps with a flux footprint model (O4), and estimate net CO2 and CH4 sink-source strengths towards a constrained atmospheric carbon budget (O5). The goal is to shed light on how tall shrub encroachment affects vegetation composition, structure, and diversity and associated surface-atmosphere interactions across scales in the ISR. Leveraging ‘nested’ tundra flux measurements made with eddy covariance and different chamber techniques, we propose to collect ultra-high (mm) resolution drone imagery over the terrestrial-aquatic landscape to identify and measure individual plants and map plant communities and land cover (incl. streams and lakes) using artificial intelligence methods. The resulting maps will be used for upscaling and to calculate the relative flux contributions of plant communities (~plot) and land cover types (~ecosystem) to the total fluxes (~landscape) with a flux footprint model. The research project is linked with the Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU)-Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) Partnership Agreement. The Partnership's dedicated Community Liaison, Mr. Bruce Hanna, has facilitated communication with various NWT stakeholders and communities. In addition, the research project is in collaboration with Permafrost Pathways based at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Through this collaboration results from the research project will be directly communicated with the international climate science community and also will find their way to policy- and decision makers. In addition, members of the Inuvik Community Corporation is directly involved in the research project through a Future Skills Centre-funded training network, aiming to build local capacity for micrometeorological monitoring across the Northwest Territories. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: March 15 - September 15, 2023