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. 

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! 

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. 

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.