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Sharing science at Arctic Change meeting

Guest post by M.Sc. student Gillian Thiel

Gillian baking muffins on a rare sunny day!

What happens when you gather many of the world’s leading Arctic researchers, northerners, enthusiastic graduate students, and government officials in one building during a the biggest snowstorm of the year? A pretty amazing conference!

During the week of Dec. 11 – 15^th, a handful of professors and students from the Cape Bounty research team braved the impending snow to attend the international Arctic Change 2017 conference in Québec City. It was possibly the final time that researchers from around the world would have the opportunity to meet under the umbrella of the ArcticNet funding program. It did not disappoint.

Student Day (Dec. 11^th) was a fantastic day planned by students for students and included an elevator-pitch competition, panel discussions, and workshops on topics such as data management and bridging northern and southern perspectives on arctic research priorities.

Over the week, I had the opportunity to attend a variety of sessions on topics including ocean biogeochemistry, rapid changes in extreme environments, and vulnerability, adaptation and resilience to climate change in the Arctic.

One of the most memorable presentations was one by Ed Zebedee about how the community of Pangnirtung, Nunavut dealt with a major power plant failure in 2015. It highlighted some of the major barriers to living in the north such as ill-equipped airports and the difficulties of shipping large equipment to remote communities. However, Mr. Zebedee’s presentation also highlighted the incredible resilience and adaptability of Pangnirtung residents, the efficacy of the emergency management plans that were in place, and the initiative of the Canadian Rangers. You can read more about the power failure here.

I also had the opportunity to attend panel discussions including one on the politics surrounding defense and development in the Northwest Passage led by the Honourable Minister Laurence Cannon and featuring Hannah Uniugsaraq (Director of Nunavut Tunngavik), Lindsay Rodman, Suzanne Lalonde, Tom Lawson, and Michael Byers. It was an impressive panel.

But, what made the whole week truly unforgettable were the people I met. Arctic Change 2017 gave me the opportunity to interact with researchers from around the world. They gave me insight into my own research, and also exposed me to science I knew nothing about in regions of the Arctic I had never even heard of! Overall, the Arctic Change 2017 was a fantastic, fun, and educational experience. 

More reflections on 2017 field work

Guest post by Jackie Hung:

Going to Cape Bounty for a second field season, the novelty of High Arctic field work has still not worn off. Seeing the Weatherhaven tents through the window of the Twin Otters as we circled the cape brought back all the memories of the previous season. That is, until we had to dig out the tents from over 2 metres of snow.

Opening camp was a completely new, rewarding, and humbling experience. Seeing the landscape transform from late-winter conditions to spring and summer growth gave me a new perspective on the amount of change that the land undergoes and the harsh environment that the flora and fauna endure here. I was able to finally see and take part in some of the research and data collection that is undertaken in the early season, including lake sampling and river channelizing. Coming to the field before the growing season has also given us the chance to see the birds in their nesting season. Camp has been frequented by several visitors so far, including large muskox herds, curious caribou, and large Arctic hares.

 

Snow sampling and working with data loggers that record soil temperature year-round at Cape Bounty. 

 The transition into July and the growing season was a welcome change for me as a soil scientist. We were keen to arrive early into the field to capture the spring-summer transition; however, that occurred a few weeks later than it did last season. The higher amount of snowfall in the Canadian Arctic this summer meant a delayed start to my sampling. My research builds on the knowledge base established from the previous season and looks to explore unanswered questions that came up during my field sampling and analysis. My Master’s research at Ryerson University looked at the spatial and temporal dynamics soil nitrogen availability and how it related to environmental variables in the wet sedge meadows. Moving forward, I am interested in examining the relationships between the soil available nitrogen, gas exchange, and the changing climate in the wet sedge meadows and mesic tundra and linking these questions to remote sensing techniques.

In 2017, my day-to-day activities included taking static CO₂ measurements, trace gas sampling, spectroradiometer work, and soil sampling. Carbon exchange autochambers and buried soil moisture and temperature loggers are allowing me to take continuous measurements in various locations to complement my seasonal data set. Soil samples taken from the field will be used towards laboratory experiments that will allow me to manipulate different biophysical features to see the microbial response the soils to elevated temperature and fertilization. This field season has given me a head start to the sampling for my new role as a Queen’s student and will help in formulating the questions that will form the basis of my Ph.D.

Important new publication

We publish most of our research results in scientific journals that are reviewed by other researchers (or peer-reviewed).  It is an important part of sharing the knowledge that we gain from research with others, much in the same way we try to share with this blog and our Facebook page.

This week an important new paper was published in Nature Scientific Reports by the CBAWO group.  You can download a copy for free at Nature Scientific Reports.  In this, we show how recent permafrost change at Cape Bounty has made a significant impact on the lakes, changing the chemical composition of some elements by up to 500% in a few years.  This is an incredible rate of change, and this work documents how quickly this can happen and that it occurred in both lakes at the same time.  We also used the otoliths (ear bones) from Arctic char in the lakes to determine if this chemical change had influenced the fish.  We found that many elements changed abruptly in the fish otoliths at the time of the rapid changes in the lakes, signalling that the fish are responding to this environmental change.  By using a fish condition measure (by looking at length and weight of each fish), we show that the condition of the fish in the East Lake is improving, so it would seem that the permafrost change we have observed in recent years is contributing to enhanced living conditions for the fish.

Ice-push ridges on the shore of West Lake, August 2017.  Notice the cloudy water that has been that way since the winter of 2011-12.  

There is likely much more to the story, as the lake ice cover has become less persistent and water temperatures have increased as well.  The West Lake also tells an interesting story with the opposite effect:  underwater landslides (or slumps) that have made the lake continuously muddy have resulted in a continuous deterioration of the condition of Arctic char. 

So it would seem that the two lakes are going in different directions, but both are showing strong impacts from recent environmental change.

Part of the reason this paper is so important is that it summarizes work that has been carried out since 2004 at Cape Bounty, when the first lake water samples were taken and the ecosystem sampled.  We have continued this work and expanded it by working with collaborators at Environment and Climate Change Canada who are experts in contaminants in northern ecosystems, and residents of Resolute that have important knowledge about the fish and lake ecosystems.  This collaborative effort is reflected in the range of authors of this paper- each person contributed important parts of the overall story. 

Like most research, these results generate many new questions but we are working hard to pursue these.  We hope to be able to share them with you in the months and years to come!

West Lake at Cape Bounty, August 2009.

Sediment research in 2017

Guest post by Casey Beel, Ph.D. candidate

This season was interesting for High Arctic hydrology. Total snowfall, and snow water equivalence estimates, was amongst the highest at Cape Bounty since monitoring began in 2003. This year also saw a significant delay in the initiation of snowmelt and channel flow, with the start of discharge not beginning until June 22 - the second latest day of first flow in our records. This change to the hydrology creates more questions about how this year will fit into our longer term record and what increased snowfall means for suspended sediment transfer.

Camping out at the West River station during a long sampling campaign.

The main objective of my research this year was to gain a better understanding of the temporal patterns of suspended sediment transfer. To do this, I spent 15 hours camped out in my waders, with a deck chair for comfort, and over 200 sample bottles, collecting water every 10 minutes from the West River. Thankfully, I choose a perfect day for this saga - with blue skies and warm temperatures. Across the river, two Greater Snow Geese have chosen a small grassy knoll to nest, and for the majority of my day, they were my only company, and as the hours drew on, I began to realize that they weren’t great conversationalists.

West River at full runoff.

One of the exciting additions to my research is that it is spatially distributed across multiple catchments. This allows me the opportunity to explore the landscape and find exciting new landscape features, fossils, and even marine shells that are emerging from degrading slopes. So far this year, we have discovered a newly forming landscape disturbance in the lower East River catchment, revisited the expanding retrogressive thaw slump to the north of camp, and collected enough rocks for my collection to warrant an extra bag of luggage for the trip home.

What grows here....

Guest post from M.Sc. student Valerie Freemantle

I am happy to say that my sampling has been going well and that Cape Bounty has started to feel like home. I wake up every morning looking out to the weather haven and West Lake. The days are long, but being outside and surrounded by science all day makes it such a rewarding place to work.

A view from the tent!

For my thesis, I am using digital pictures and satellite imagery in order to see if there has been any change in the vegetation cover at Cape Bounty since 2004. In the field, I have been revisiting plots that were sampled in 2004 and 2008 and using digital images to estimate the percent coverage of vegetation. When I return to Kingston, I will use these images to scale up to the satellite imagery this year. Then, I can relate these pictures and the data from 2004 and 2008 to satellite imagery and determine if there has been any change in vegetation between 2004 and 2017.

The vegetation in the Arctic has to be able to survive in some difficult conditions. The Arctic growing season is short and there is little on the landscape to block the wind. However, flowers still manage to survive in the slight depressions in the landscape where trickles of water flow soon after snowmelt.

For example, here are some Arctic poppies (Igutsat niqingit, Papaver spp.) blowing on a slope. They are all pointing towards the (never setting) summer sun. The areas where they have managed to establish themselves are in slight depressions where enough water flows to support lichens, mosses and flowers.

Arctic poppies

Another very common plant is the purple saxifrage (Aupilattunnguat, Saxifraga oppositifolia). This is the territorial flower of Nunavut. These little flowers provide bursts of colour all over Cape Bounty.

Purple saxifrage

The real powerhouse of sequestration in the Arctic is made up of vegetation like mosses and sedges. I need some more work learning to tell these apart, but there are many varieties of sedges and grasses at Cape Bounty. Here is a picture of some sedge and moss growing in a small water rack at the side of a rocky slope. The vegetation out here is pretty awesome.

Moss and sedges

Knowing how much vegetation is on the landscape is important. Vegetation is an important mechanism for removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it. Generally, the Arctic has been considered a net sink of carbon, meaning that it stores more than it produces. Mosses and sedges are a big component of this storage. But, with the anticipated changes in Arctic climate due to climate change, there is the potential that this trend may change. Thus, the next step of my project will be to link any changes in vegetation cover to changes in carbon sequestration. I am planning on doing this by relating the trends in vegetation growth from the satellites to measurements of carbon intake and output from eddy covariance towers here at Cape Bounty.   

2017 field season underway

Post by Casey Beel, Ph.D. student

Casey waiting for the next sample at the West River.  Snow geese are unimpressed with hydrological research!
(photo:  P. Treitz)

This season has been interesting for High Arctic hydrology. Total snowfall, and snow water equivalence estimates, was amongst the highest at Cape Bounty since monitoring began in 2003. This year also saw a significant delay in the initiation of snowmelt and channel flow, with the start of discharge not beginning until June 22 - the second latest day of first flow in our records. This change to the hydrology creates more questions about how this year will fit into our longer term record and what increased snowfall means for suspended sediment transfer.

The main objective of my research this year is to gain a better understanding of the temporal patterns of suspended sediment transfer. To do this, I spent 15 hours camped out in my waders, with a deck chair for comfort, and over 200 sample bottles, collecting water every 10 minutes from the West River. Thankfully, I choose a perfect day for this saga - with blue skies and warm temperatures. Across the river, two Greater Snow Geese have chosen a small grassy knoll to nest, and for the majority of my day, they were my only company, and as the hours drew on, I began to realize that they weren’t great conversationalists.

One of the exciting additions to my research is that it is spatially distributed across multiple catchments. This allows me the opportunity to explore the landscape and find exciting new landscape features, fossils, and even marine shells that are emerging from degrading slopes. So far this year, we have discovered a newly forming landscape disturbance in the lower East River catchment, revisited the expanding retrogressive thaw slump to the north of camp, and collected enough rocks for my collection to warrant an extra bag of luggage for the trip home. With a month left in my season, I am hoping for more, exciting scientific and curiosity based discoveries.

Resolute Qarmartalik School Science Fair

Bad weather in Resolute during late winter.

Bad weather can be frustrating when your excitement to begin summer research is at a high. You have all your personal gear packed. You have spent two days organizing everything you need for the next month.  All of your scientific equipment is ready to be installed. But the weather keeps changing. Snow keeps falling. Visibility is poor. And planes remain grounded. This can be trying. But then an opportunity to visit the community and participate in the science fair at the school is presented to you. You forget about the fact that there are delays in getting to the field and you remember that outreach opportunities like this are one of the reasons we are involved in Arctic research.

For the last four years, the Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP), Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), have sponsored a science fair for Grades 1-11 at the Qarmartalik School in Resolute Bay. This year, students presented their research on which form of renewable energy would have the greatest benefit for Resolute, how to better insulate housing in the community, the best toothpaste to use to protect their teeth, the best compost to use in this environment, and many other topics that the students were either passionate about or that were directly relevant to their day-to-day lives in the Arctic.

Researcher Neal Scott with several students at the Qarmartalik School Science Fair.  NRCat was also on hand for the festivities! [picture posted with permission of parents and school]

We were fortunate enough to be invited to judge this year’s science fair along with other community members (e.g., the RCMP) and encourage the students’ scientific curiosities. This opportunity also enabled us to meet and talk with the parents and teachers of this remote community. We were shown traditional tools used to clean and stretch animal hides. We were each given syllabic charts to encourage us to learn how to write our names in Inuktitut, and we were taught a traditional game, where the goal is to be the first person to get the end of their stick into one of the small holes drilled into a caribou antler. But for the children (and ourselves if we are being honest), the best part of the day was a visit from the Natural Resources Cat (NRCat) – for which it didn’t take long for the kids to “de-tail” the costume (3 minutes to be exact).  

It was a great day to share the excitement of science with the children of Resolute!

Polar Continental Shelf Program

We are working hard to get ready for our 2017 field season at CBAWO. There is a lot to organize- people, schedules, equipment, flights, and funding.  It is a job that seems to start about a month after we return from the field and continues for most of the year- and in reality it is just that. There is a lot of work in the background that makes research at CBAWO and other projects across the Canadian Arctic possible.

Based in Resolute, Nunavut, PCSP is a logistics support agency that makes Arctic research possible.  

One group that deserves a lot of credit for our research success is the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP).  This small program is part of Natural Resources Canada, the national government, and has been operating in the the Arctic since 1958.  It is probably not an overstatement to suggest that PCSP has supported almost every major research project in the High Arctic over the years, involving thousands of researchers. Many of the projects are based in Resolute or other communities in the Arctic, but a large number of them are like ours, located in remote field camps scattered over an area the size of western Europe.  PCSP has been a bedrock support for all of this research, by providing logistics, aircraft, vehicles, field equipment, and a base of operations in Resolute where they can seemingly help you with any problem.  They also have a well-earned reputation for serving great food in their cafeteria and there is nothing like cleaning up with a hot shower and reconnecting with the world after a long field season at the PCSP base.

PCSP facilities have changed quite a bit over the years but the core of the operation is an accommodation building and a warehouse where equipment is stored and maintained.  The accommodation building has expanded over the years, most recently in 2011 when a joint effort with the Canadian Military resulted in a significant expansion.  This collaboration means that military training operations have a home in the High Arctic, and researchers can use the facilities at other times.   They can hold and feed over 200 people, and when the weather is bad and flights are not moving, they can find themselves with a full house!

The PCSP accommodation and lab buildings in mid-May.  Staff have been working since January with researchers and military training exercises.

The PCSP warehouse is a huge building filled with field equipment. There is seemingly everything there:  tents, drills, boats, snow machines, radios, and every kind of camping gear.  There is a full mechanics shop for keeping everything thing running smoothly and those "can you help me with this?" moments. They have a supply of fuel for everything, all planned the year before and brought up on the sealift in September.  Upstairs there are storage spaces for us to leave equipment over winter, which saves a tremendous amount of freight expense for researchers.

Putting it together in the warehouse.  A load arranged to fly out to the field camp with everything you need to survive and do science.

Perhaps the most important aspect of PCSP is the access to charter aircraft they facilitate and support.  Small planes like the Twin Otter in the picture below are the workhorses of the Arctic, able to land on almost any surface and move equipment and people to the most remote parts of the Arctic. PCSP usually has 1-2 of these aircraft on contract, as well as helicopters and even larger planes when the need arises.  Aside from facilitating the use of the aircraft for researchers, PCSP Base Managers work to make the most of these planes. That often means arranging sharing of flights and using unused return flights for other purposes.  This is no small task to manage, and when the meter is running at about $2500 each hour, this effort is really critical to stretch research budgets. The process of dispatching flights is complicated and will be the subject of another post, but suffice to say it is something that the research community that PCSP serves is really dependent on!

Waiting for the next trip- a Twin Otter at the PCSP base in Resolute.

There are many other partners that make our research possible, but there are few that seem to do as much with so little as PCSP. They are really one of Canada's great successes that more people should know about.  When the rest of the world plans to develop their polar research support, they have come to PCSP to learn how to do it.

Lake ice cover time lapse

Have you ever wondered how ice melts on an Arctic lake?  We have time lapse cameras that take images every 30 minutes of each lake.  When we combine them into videos, you can watch the ice come off in a few minutes.

Sit back and enjoy the 2012 ice-off on East Lake!

QUAWLity- a new laboratory for research at Cape Bounty

As the research program has become more complex at Cape Bounty, we have needed increasingly sophisticated laboratory facilities and increased amounts of power in the lab.  This is not a trivial issue in a remote camp.  In the past we have made due with temporary lab tents and used a portable generator, but these conditions were less than ideal and the generators were noisy, need gasoline and ultimately can be unreliable.  This is the story of how we built our new lab facility, QUAWLity (Queen's University Arctic Watershed Laboratory).

With support from the Canadian Government Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), QUAWLity moved from the drawing board to reality.  We shipped up the Weather Haven tent and arranged wood for the floor from a supplier in Resolute.  It all arrived in camp in early August 2015 and construction began.

The floor was first to be built.  We are not allowed to put in permanent foundations, so we placed the wooden floor on blocks and built it with insulation and linoleum to make it cleaner and warmer.

It was a group effort to build the tent.  Conditions were calm and foggy, perfect for handling the large tent pieces.  These tents are very well designed and have robust metal frames and vinyl covers that are suitable for long term exposure.  The tent went up quickly despite the dreary weather.

The construction crew, just before cutting the front door out.

The finished tent, secured to the ground with long metal stakes and metal guy wires.

That was it for 2015, we left the tent empty until 2016.  Arriving in May, you never quite know what to expect, but other than a bit of loose material at the front, all well well.  These tents create large snow drifts, but the upwind side is usually bare of snow.

The first order of business was installing the propane wall furnace.  Dr. Benjamin Amann was eager to help!

We organized the lab into a series of workstations where sample filtering and handling could be carried out. The fume hood was a nice addition that allows safe handling of acids needed to stabilize some samples and a propane chest freezer means no more running the generator to keep the cooler frozen.

The last part of the set up was a solar system. Inside the tent are a panel for the electronics and a cooler for the AGM deep cycle batteries.  These batteries are designed not to freeze so they are safe to use in this setting and the cooler provides further protection from temperature extremes.  A temperature logger placed with the batteries showed that they stayed at -30degC or warmer, compared to almost -50degC outside at times.  They were fully charged when we arrived in mid-May

The 300W of solar panels are on a wooden frame outside, secured down with guy wires.  The orientation is perfect to have the wind scour the panels and keep them clear of snow in the winter. Even though we have 24-hour daylight during field seasons, the midnight sun does not charge our batteries!

After a full season in 2016, everything seems to be running well.  The lab tent is a clean, warm and spacious place to do our work and we really pushed it with a large field crew in 2016.  Everything worked to expectations, and the roller chairs really make life easier.  The solar system was sufficient to power everything so we are now officially free of generators for the lab.  It's all part of doing research 400 km from the nearest community in the remote High Arctic.

Biogeochemical Research in the High Arctic

Hi! My name is Gillian and I’m a first-year Master’s student at Queen’s. Dr. Melissa Lafrenière, co-manager of the Queen’s Facility for Biogeochemical Research on Environmental Change and the Cryosphere (FABRECC: http://www.queensu.ca/geographyandplanning/fabrecc-lafreniere/home) is my supervisor. We are working to better understand biogeochemical processes at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory. In other words, we study the interactions between the physical, chemical, biological, and geological processes occurring in the High Arctic permafrost environment.

               

Specifically, I study carbon in organic matter. The permafrost of the Arctic stores huge amounts of organic carbon. In fact, researchers estimate that there is twice as much carbon stored in the permafrost as there is carbon in the atmosphere right now. As permafrost degrades due to warming temperatures, some of the permafrost carbon could be released to the atmosphere as greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

Why will only some of the carbon be released? Well, only a portion of the permafrost carbon is decomposable, and carbon must undergo decomposition to produce greenhouse gases. My job is to determine what makes the carbon decomposable and identify where the decomposable carbon is likely to be found on a High Arctic landscape.

Knowing how much carbon is decomposable, and where it’s located, is important for developing climate models. Because data on decomposable carbon are limited, carbon stored in permafrost isn’t well incorporated into current climate models. The results of our research could change that. For example, if we know there is a lot of decomposable carbon stored in areas highly susceptible to enhanced permafrost thaw, then we might conclude there is a high probability of greenhouse gas emissions in those areas. This increased probability can then be accounted for in climate model projections, making them more accurate.

A soil profile at one of my sampling sites at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory on Melville Island, NU.

I collected soil and water samples from sites with varying geomorphology and vegetation at Cape Bounty during the summer of 2016. Back in the lab at Queen’s, I incubated these samples for twenty-eight days. During an incubation, the samples were kept a constant temperature. At specific time points throughout the incubation period, I removed a subset (or aliquot) of each sample and analyzed it to characterize the molecular structure of its carbon compounds and its organic carbon concentration.

Now that the incubation period is finished, I can calculate how much organic carbon was lost (through decomposition) over the twenty-eight days. Better yet, I can compare these data with the molecular structure of the carbon compounds to see if molecular structure is an indicator of decomposability. If they are related, it would be really exciting since the methods used to characterize molecular structure are much easier to perform than the incubations. If molecular structures could be used to predict carbon decomposability instead of incubations, it would save researchers a lot of time and money!

An emission excitation matrix (EEM), like the one shown above, provides insight into the molecular structure of carbon compounds in water samples.

The next step for my project will be to look at how the decomposability of carbon varies by sample site. If we identify a relationship between carbon decomposability and study site characteristics, we could use this to predict how carbon decomposability will vary across the broader landscape. For example, if we find that carbon decomposability is related to a certain vegetation community, we could use vegetation cover maps to predict how carbon decomposability varies across the landscape.

               

The best part about my project is that I get to go back to Cape Bounty next summer for a second field season. So, based on what I find out from the lab work I’m doing now, I can tailor my 2017 sampling plan to better address my research questions. Stay tuned for more results and stories about field season preparations later this winter! 

Imaging (and imagining) High Arctic Lakes

Guest post by Alexandre Normandeau

Maps of the lakes showing the detailed bottom bathymetry.  Blue and purple colours are the deepest areas.  

High Arctic Lakes are commonly used for environmental reconstructions because they are particularly sensitive to climate change. The Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory is probably one of the best examples of research sites that has shown the effect of climate change on landscape disturbances. The study of lake sediments can also provide information on natural hazards such as earthquakes and extreme flood events.  Ice cover is so pervasive on these lakes that it sometimes takes many years for conditions to occur that allow us to look into the lakes with modern research equipment.  After trying two previous years, in August 2015 we were finally able to finish surveying the lakes.

To analyze in great detail the history of natural hazards and climate change in the region, we brought very high-resolution echosounders in the High Arctic to map the bottom of the Cape Bounty’s lakes. These instruments emit soundwaves that travel to the bottom of the lake, and are reflected from the lakefloor before being recorded back by the echosounder. While commonly used echosounders are singlebeam (e.g., fishing echosounders), we use multibeam echosounders. This allows us to "see" on a 150° angle on each side of the boat, providing a complete image of the lake floor, similar to what Google Earth does for the land. These instruments are typically used on large research vessels and in accessible locations (near a road or human infrastructures). It was thus quite a challenge to bring our scientific equipment to such a remote location that is Cape Bounty. In collaboration with Université Laval, instead of using a large research vessel, we managed to fit our echosounder on a 7.5 m long zodiac. It is the first time that such an high-resolution mapping of lake floors is accomplished in the High Arctic.

Matt Gillman (M.Sc. student) on the Zodiac with the echosounders used in the High Arctic.

The data collected during the summer of 2015 was then corrected for vessel motion, lake-level fluctuations, sound refraction into the water, etc. The processed image of the lake-floor (Fig. 2) allowed us to understand sedimentary processes related to climate change (sea-level fluctuations, glaciations) and natural hazards (mass movements, floods).

Life at Cape Bounty

Guest post by M.Sc. student Amanda Schevers

The best way to carry the stand for the precipitation collectors. This is at the top of the West River catchment, I’m just about to install the final collector. 

I never thought I would ever consider battling snowstorms, bone-chilling winds, and sub-zero temperatures for an entire summer to be so rewarding and fun, yet somehow I ended up at Cape Bounty. Despite hearing stories from past students, seeing pictures, and reading more papers than I can remember, I still managed to be completely shocked when I hopped off the plane onto the lake ice. No pictures will ever do this place justice.

            But why am I here, in an uninhabited island in the middle of the High Arctic? Sometimes, when I get caught up in the small details of things, stepping back and re-reading my research proposal helps remind me what I am actually trying to accomplish while I am here (which, by the way is for a total of 64 days). We’ve heard all about climate change and how much it will change the world we live in, but how exactly is it going to change the surface water we, and countless aquatic ecosystems rely on?

To help answer this question, I’m going to be monitoring two rivers and their respective watersheds. This may sound easy, but it means I’m going to end up hiking 15-20 km carrying 10-12 litres of water every single day. Luckily I have PhD candidate Casey to help me out. We installed a network of monitoring stations, wells to collect subsurface water, and four precipitation collectors across the landscape. My first week at camp was spent out on the tundra, getting to know the land, the equipment, and getting a taste of the wide range of research that occurs at Cape Bounty.

            One of the best parts of hiking such a large area every day is the chance to see so many incredible things. Hiking up through snow lined channels, stopping to admire the approaching wolves, caribou, and muskox, and checking out all the bones scattered across the tundra are some of my favourites.

Before installing stations, we decided to walk up the East river channel. Water creates some pretty cool features. 

            Life at camp hasn’t been too shabby either. We’ve managed to bake a giant cookie, brownie, and apple crisp all in a frying pan. After a long, cold day in the field and in the lab a relaxing evening with dessert and camp stories are the perfect way to end the day. 

Probing the depths of the lakes

One of the interesting things we are doing at Cape Bounty is trying to understand the contributions of groundwater to the lakes.  This is something that is very subtle and hard to measure, so we had a number of approaches to deal with this challenge in 2016.

Maddie Harasyn sampled 21 different locations in the two main lakes during the spring and summer.  We located these sites from the detailed bathymetric mapping that Alexandre Normandeau completed in 2015.  This allowed us to find the best locations to test for the presence of groundwater seeping in over the winter.

2015 Bathymetry from sidescan sonar (from Normandeau et al. 2016).  Purple and blue colours represent the deepest areas of the lakes.

Measuring the water at the bottom of the lake is a real challenge.  We use instruments that are lowered on a rope down through the lake from the ice cover.  Imagine putting something the value of a car on the end of a $5 rope and you get the idea!  We slowly lower the instrument as it collects data at 3-second intervals.  That part is very standard.

The problem is that we want to avoid touching the bottom sediment because this will disturb the last measurements and contaminant the water samples with sediment.  In 2016, we avoided this by using a live video feed on the instrument.  So as one person lowered the instrument, another carefully watched the screen.  To know when we were near the bottom, a flashlight was directed downwards.  As it approached the bottom, the beam of light came into focus and then became very small, alerting us to stop in time.

The CTD-video-light-water sampler unit.  All designed to go through a hole in the ice.

In practice, this system worked quite well.  We were able to use a fish finder to know when we were approaching the bottom (the instrument appears as a big fish) and to turn on the video system.

We are working on the results now, but this effort appears to have been worth the trouble.  It is all part of the challenges of working in the Arctic and doing research.

Tundra Times

Posted by CBAWO M.Sc. student Matt Gillman

Teamwork is a large part of the scientific investigations that take place at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory (CBAWO) here on Melville Island, Nunavut. As a result, a given day may entail assisting in running an ice auger through 2 metres of lake ice so that a sediment core may be retrieved for a limnological view into paleoclimatology; or possibly hiking over tundra to collect soil and/or surface water for hydrological- or biogeochemical-based projects; or maybe collecting atmospheric gas samples with the purpose of investigating greenhouse gas emissions and drawdown due to vegetation; or grabbing stream water samples for sedimentological work; the list goes on.

My work here is focused on improving our understanding of how subsurface hydrology and hydraulics determine the delivery of water and nutrients to High Arctic Rivers. I am particularly interested in late season delivery of subsurface water and nitrogen, both of which act as controls on water quality. From this work I hope to provide information which may be applied to resource management decisions concerned with High Arctic water security, as well as future scientific endeavors aimed at building on our understanding of northern hydrology.

Now that the river is thawed and subsurface flow of water is becoming more abundant, my work in the river system consumes most of my days. Such days involve collecting solute and temperature data along the length of the river to look at the location of subsurface inflows, collecting water samples to assess the chemical composition of waters in soils adjacent to the channel, and measuring water table levels in sampling wells to map out the hydraulic conditions near the river.

Research aside, the landscape and wildlife at CBAWO are amazing. A photo can rarely give justice to the rolling hills and bedrock outcrops of the tundra. Regardless of how rough one’s day is going, it can normally be set right by a brief look around as reminder of setting. Elusive as they may be at times, the wolves, caribou, muskoxen, and arctic foxes are always a neat surprise to come across. 

A muskox enjoying some beautiful weather on the western bank of the Boundary River, Melville Island, NU.

Having had rare encounters, the animals on Melville Island have little fear of humans and are quite curious. The muskox seen in the photo here was content to watch us work from the opposite bank of Boundary River, a river which drains a lake on the boundary of Nunavut and The Northwest Territories.

As a whole, I am thoroughly enjoying the beginning of my first full (I spent a couple of weeks here last summer) field season conducting Arctic-based research. I am lost for words to describe how neat it is to be here.

Vegetation research at Cape Bounty

A guest entry by Sean Arruda (newly-minted M.Sc.)

My research focuses on the impacts of climate change on Arctic plants. For example, air temperature in the Arctic is increasing faster than anywhere else on Earth which is also expected to cause changes in the amount of rain and snow that falls in particular regions. If more snowfall occurs during the winter, leading to deeper snow, how will this extra snow effect the way plants grow in the following summer? And what if the same plants are also exposed to warmer summer temperatures than average? Does the insulating effect of deeper snow benefit the plants beneath, more than the plants that live beneath an average snow pack? Since deeper snow takes longer to melt away in the spring, does this lead to a shorter growth period for plants, or does the growing period shift so that plant development occurs later than plants under average snow conditions? Do warmer temperatures lead to changes in plant photosynthesis or productivity?

In order to attempt to answer some of these questions a long term experiment was set up at Cape Bounty to mimic some of the changes which are expected to occur to the Arctic climate. The International Tundra Experiment (ITEX, for short) has sites located in every Country within the Arctic which use the same methods for monitoring plant growth and abundance, as well as for experimentally manipulating the climate. At Cape Bounty, we manipulate air temperature by using open-top chambers (OTCs; image below). These chambers act like small greenhouses, warming the air inside by trapping in some heat. We also set up snow fences which trap windblown snow and let it accumulate about three times deeper than the average snow depth. We are able to compare between every combination of snow and warming effects by having plots exposed to both snow and warming, snow only, warming only, and some plots that remain in normal temperature and snow conditions. 

Throughout the summer, I spend a lot of time crawling around on the ground staring at plants. I monitor the date that specific individual plants begin to turn green, to flower, and to turn brown or red in the autumn. I do this in order to determine whether these warming and snow treatments are impacting the way plants grow, and also to determine whether specific species of plants are impacted more than others. I also measure how productive the plants within each plot by measuring how much carbon dioxide is being emitted to the atmosphere from the soils/plants, and how much is being removed from the atmosphere by the plants themselves through photosynthesis. We do this in a number of ways.

When I arrived this year on June 8, there was still very much snow throughout the landscape, and especially behind the ITEX snow fences! Since one of my goals this year was to monitor when each of the different treatment plots became snow free, and there was so much snow, I had time to take care of a few other tasks. One of these included setting up a special type of meteorological station which measures carbon dioxide changes in the atmosphere. CO2 concentrations in the winter time are higher than in the summer because there are no green plants growing yet. Once the snow melts, plants begin to photosynthesize, a process which removes CO2 from the atmosphere to use for plant growth. This removal of CO2 is so significant that it’s noticeable when you measure the concentration over the entire spring and summer. CO2 also gets emitted into the atmosphere from the soil. We’re interested in this CO2 concentration because it has been increasing significantly over the past several decades, and seem to be causing Earth’s temperature to increase through a process called the greenhouse effect. This station, seen below, measures the CO2 concentration continually throughout the summer. 

 Wildlife and Landscapes

At Cape Bounty there are no roads, no permanent buildings, no electricity (other than from a gas generator), no internet or email, and no phones. We are totally isolated and we are the visitors here, guests among the Birds, Lemmings, Caribou, Foxes, Muskox, Wolves, and even the Polar Bear! This is there home, and getting the chance to visit this place is something that I never take for granted.

Every day we see several of various bird species who live here. One of the common birds, two of which seem to be possibly nesting nearby because we see them almost daily, is the Brant, which is a type of goose. We’ve also seen the Snow Bunting, Lapland Longspur, King Eider, Snow Goose, Harris’ Sparrow, American Golden Plover, Jaeger, and the Rough Legged Hawk (below). This year I’ve made a point to try to identify and photographs all the different birds I’ve seen. 

On more rare occasions we sometimes get the honour of seeing herds of Muskox. Often too far away, I’ve counted herds up to 25-30 individuals. On this rare occasion, we saw the herd 2 or 3 km away in the distance as we approached one of our study sites. About 50 meters away, just on the other side of a river, an object that we all just assumed from a distance was a boulder turned out to be a single Muskox, possibly standing guard, keeping an eye on us? I'm not sure why he was so far from the herd, but he didn’t seem to mind posing for some incredible photos that day!

More often than you might think we are visited by three wolves. They never seem too interested in us, and they have plenty of Muskox and Caribou to eat so they have never been a problem to us. They tend to visit our research sites, mark their territory, and move on, often never even looking at us while they do their rounds. On some occasions they come to our camp and remind us of their presence. These animals are incredible and its amazing to get to be able to see them like this in their natural environment. The feeling you get when you get to stand there and look at a wild Arctic Wolf from 30 meters away is like nothing I’ve experienced before, and sometimes its nice to not have a camera and just take in that moment. I have a lot of respect for any animal who can survive here year round, but the Wolf is by far my favourite.

Lastly, the scenery and landscapes are unexplainable. No matter how many photos I take, none can really capture what it’s like to see this place with your own eyes. The photos below is from one of my favourite location and scenes here at Cape Bounty. On top of this plateau, the bedrock juts out forming these huge pillars. From here you can see both of the lakes and the ocean as far as the horizon. Right now there is so much contrast on the landscape between remaining snow packs, meltwater, distant greening valleys and rivers. Hiking along this ridge really makes me appreciate the opportunity to come here and do science. It makes the long, cold, tiring, days carrying gear seem like nothing when these are the views we get to see every day. 

Day in the Life of an Arctic Scientist

(Contributed by CBAWO student Maddie Harasyn- Queen's University)

Science in the Arctic has turned out to be really fun! I have been here for just over two weeks and I’m actually starting to get used to the Cape Bounty routine. It usually begins with waking up at 7:30 AM to the bright light shining through the fluorescent walls of the tents we all sleep in. Then the whole crew migrates down to the Weatherhaven (what we call our mess tent) for coffee and a breakfast of either oatmeal or pancakes. We typically add excessive amounts of toppings to our breakfast to change it up a little – peanut butter, Nutella, raisins or on special mornings M&M’s. Over breakfast, we talk about all of our schedules for the day.

My schedule involves walking down to the river beside our campsite at 9 AM and collecting water samples. I then filter the water samples to measure the amount of suspended sediment, dissolved oxygen and ions in the water which involves three separate filtering processes. Often other researchers in camp offer to help me filter, as we all help out each other when we can! I then hike out to the three smaller sub-catchments that feed the river which I just sampled and collect the same water samples at each, which is about an hour and a half hike. We always go out in pairs for safety, so the hike is filled with good conversation and lots of laughs. We often find cool things on our hikes as well, like interesting rocks or full skeletons of Muskox.

Then back to filtering in our lab tent, which occupies time until lunch rolls around. For lunch, we often make soup, Kraft Dinner or eat copious amounts of peanut butter and jam on Ryvita crackers. My afternoon often consists of helping others with their research projects – like installing sensors, or hiking up to one of the sub-catchments to collect data from the loggers recording data across the landscape. It is very interesting to learn what other students are studying up here, and how their projects are coming along. Everyone has very interesting and very diverse topics, which makes every day different and exciting. To end off the day, I complete my final rounds of water sample collections at all of the sites, and filter everything before dinner. Some dinner favorites are spaghetti, burritos or chili. Over dinner, we chat about what we accomplished during the day and neat things that we all found out on the tundra. Then we head back off to bed, in the same brightness which we woke up to.

Hiking to East Lake to collect water samples.

My personal project is looking at the water chemistry in the East and West Lake to the south of our campsite. A previous researcher discovered that small depressions exist in the bottom of the lakes, which could hint that groundwater is seeping into the lakes via these sites. My project is focused on determining the source of these depressions, which I will do by studying the water chemistry in each depression. This is done by drilling holes in the lake ice, and lowering a device down the water column slowly that measures depth, electrical conductivity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and turbidity. Water chemistry samples are also collected at the bottom of each site, to be analyzed for ions and isotopes back in the lab. After lowering this device at all 22 sites, the data can be viewed on one of the lab computers and studied to help hypothesize what may be occurring at the bottom of the lake at these sites.

So far, I have found that the East Lake has mostly uniform conductivity throughout the water columns at all of the sites, whereas some specific sites in the West Lake show an increase in conductivity and decrease in dissolved oxygen with depth in the lower water column. This could suggest that groundwater is entering the lakes through these depressions, as groundwater would have a higher concentration of dissolved ions which increase the conductivity of the water at these sites. The water chemistry analyses and historic records of the disturbance patterns in this area will help consolidate this hypothesis, which will be completed as part of my thesis back at Queen’s throughout the final year of my undergraduate program.

Both lakes we are studying can be seen above: East to the left and West to the right.