Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The proposed research is a critical step in our long-term research program to provide new insight and quantification of the effects of climate change on the groundwater and surface water of Canada's subarctic regions. The overall long-term focus is on quantifying the hydrologic, geotechnical, and biogeochemical response of wetland-dominated discontinuous permafrost to atmospheric temperature and solar variations. Specifically, for this CRD project, large-scale experiments on peat samples from the central Mackenzie River basin will be coupled with on-going field studies to better elucidate active layer moisture transport processes. Central to the research is a Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funded climate chamber, at the University of Western Ontario Biotron facility, which can reproduce the Canadian subarctic solar and atmospheric environment and house soil monoliths up to 1.5 m in diameter and 4 m in height. No other similar facility exists in Canada, U.S., or perhaps the world. Undisturbed peat cores 60 cm in diameter and ~ 75 cm deep, inclusive of vegetation, were taken in August 2007 at our field site near Fort Simpson NWT. Once the chamber and soil monolith operational parameters have been verified to field conditions, a key component of this CRD project, a wide range of climate forcing experiments (varying solar energy, air temperatures, precipitation, CO2) will be performed. Of particular interest is to quantify the moisture dynamics at the active-layer / permafrost transition zone and develop numerical models for estimating the position of this interface and the water table during seasonal ground thawing. These dynamics need to be understood in order to estimate the volume and timing of runoff from wetland-dominated basins in discontinuous permafrost zones. The experiments will answer critical questions, not addressable by field data alone, on how Canada's subarctic ecosystems will respond to climate change. Furthermore, validating the climate chamber as a tool to study cold region ecohydrological processes will allow the facility and BioChambers Inc. to be recognized nationally / internationally and stimulate further research and development.