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.

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!

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).

Research infrastructure

Autumn is a time when we are hard at work analysing the data from the past field season.  We also have to start to plan for the next season with many applications for funding due in November and permits to renew. Plans for 2014 are coming along nicely and we expect to be at CBAWO for almost three months.

A big part of operating a long term research program is to carry out basic, systematic measurements that are needed for all kinds of work.  These include weather, river, soil and lake measurements and they are the cornerstone of our efforts at CBAWO.  In this region of the Arctic, there are no systematic river or lake measurements taken by government agencies, and the nearest weather station is 300 km away at Mould Bay, so we really need to have good quality data for our research.  

This map shows the current primary measurement network.  There are a number of weather, river and lake stations that have been in operation from the beginning in 2003, and some like the small streams and soil stations that have been added since that time.  There are many other locations not shown here that are sampled regularly but this network is the core of CBAWO.

In the last two years, we have added time lapse cameras to this basic network.  We have two located on a plateau edge to provide images of the ice cover on each lake.  This is very important for us as we are not usually there when the ice forms in autumn, and in some years (like 2013), the ice comes off the lakes after we leave as well.  The cameras perform well but can be buried by snow, so we miss much of the winter.

We installed a time lapse camera on the West River station in 2013 as well, looking down stream at the river and lake.  The goal of this is to provide some visual indication of what happens at the river in our absence.