NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region

Tags: permafrost, permafrost degradation, discontinuous permafrost, peatlands, water flow

Objective(s): To improve the understanding, parameterisation and prediction of water flow and storage processes in peatland-dominated, thawing, discontinuous permafrost.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5781. The long-term objective of this research programme is to improve the understanding, parameterisation and prediction of water flow and storage processes in peatland-dominated, thawing, discontinuous permafrost. Over the next 5 years, significant progress toward this long term objective will be made through the following short-term objectives: O1: Define the changing spatial distribution of permafrost, wetland and forest cover over the past 70 years from aerial/satellite remote sensing; O2: Conduct field studies to improve the understanding of the 1) rates, patterns, controls and causes of permafrost thaw and resulting land-cover changes, and 2) water flux and storage processes within peat plateau-bog complexes, runoff from such complexes, conveyance along channel fens, and how such process change with permafrost thaw; O3: Develop a new method to simulate thaw of discontinuous permafrost and the resulting land cover changes; O4: Simulate the major water flux and storage processes controlling runoff from plateau-bog complexes and routing along fens using complementary hydrological models, and improve the models using new knowledge from O2; O5: Use the permafrost (O3) and hydrological (O4) simulations to estimate future quantities of runoff from wetland-dominated basins with discontinuous permafrost under possible scenarios of warming-induced permafrost thaw. The field activities will focus on maintaining the monitoring networks needed to detect changes in snowcover, evaporation, soil moisture, water level, depth to permafrost, vegetation and other key indicators of ecosystem change. These activities will be carried out using existing infrastructure, including water level recorders, climate stations, and other sensors already deployed. Where specific information is required on any of the above, some additional measurements will be taken so as to imporve the understanding of the rate and pattern of change in any of the above factors, and what processes are driving such change. The research team will continue to liaise with the Lidlii Kue and Jean-Marie First Nations. Annual reports to the Aurora Research Institute, and publications will be sent to the communities each year. I also visit as many of the band offices and government agencies when I am in the Fort Simpson region. Dissemination and outreach is enhanced through the Partnership Agreement between Laurier and the GNWT. The Partnership's Community Liaison (Bruce Hanna) facilitates two-way communication with communities. Examples of direct community engagement include: • Dehcho K’Ehodi: Scotty researchers participate in Dehcho K’Ehodi Regional gatherings so that the Scotty Creek Research Station is available and prepared to assist with helping to train the Dehcho Guardians. This is an opportunity to update Dehcho communities on research/training/engagement activities of the SCRS. • Scotty Creek Field Course: The researchers will host a one-week field course at the SCRS in February of March of each year for high school environmental science students (grades 10-12) from the Dehcho Region. • Scotty researchers collaborate with the Dehcho Guardians to monitor permafrost conditions along the Enbridge pipeline (Line 21). This involved training of Guardians for permafrost monitoring (May, 2018), and collaboration with Guardians on permafrost monitoring of the pipeline (May - Aug., 2019), and geophysical measurements along the pipeline (Sept., 2019) in collaboration with Guardian teams. The researchers continue to collaborate with Guardians with on-going monitoring of Line 21 and other areas of concern to the Dehcho. • Scotty researchers in collaboration with the DFN co-proposed the Dehcho collaborative on permafrost (DCoP), a three-year programme designed to improve the capacity of the Dehcho to manage permafrost thaw. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: March 10 - September 09, 2024