Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Northern Research Supplement

The impact of climate change and variability on water resources is a pressing issue for northern freshwater landscapes in Canada. Water in these regions plays a central role in maintaining the ecological integrity of ecosystems, economic development and prosperity, and traditional use of the land and its resources by indigenous communities. Thermokarst landscapes are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Wapusk National Park (WNP) is located on the southwest coast of Hudson Bay on the Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL) and thermokarst processes have contributed to creating over 10,000 shallow lakes, which provide key habitat for large populations of waterfowl and other wildlife. WNP was established in 1996 to protect a representative area of the HBL, yet little is known about the hydrology of these freshwater basins, how they have responded to climate change and variability in the past, and how they will evolve in the future. In this region, projected warming by the late 21st century is intense. Lakes in WNP typically are <1 m deep and therefore are susceptible to becoming ephemeral, which would have associated ecological consequences. Lack of baseline hydrological information impedes assessment of the future availability of water resources in the HBL. To address this knowledge gap, hydrological processes that control contemporary lake water balances across the boreal forest - arctic tundra landscape of WNP will be identified using water isotope tracers, and hydrological variability over decadal to centennial time-scales will be characterized from multi-proxy analysis of lake sediment cores. Findings will generate new knowledge of the hydrological behaviour of lakes in WNP and provide the basis to anticipate how the hydrology of this vast northern wetland ecosystem will respond to ongoing climate change and variability. Research will be conducted in partnership with Parks Canada and the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, and will provide exceptional training opportunities for students in the field of northern hydrology. Funding from the NSERC NRS program will be used to offset costs to charter a helicopter, which is essential to conduct the sampling in this remote northern location.