Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The variability of Arctic sea ice and predictions of its reduction have motivated in the last decade large research programs of ice-covered marine ecosystems in the Canadian Arctic and related seas. In comparison, Canadian ice-covered marine ecosystems unconnected to the Arctic, such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence and eastern Canadian fjords, have received little research attention despite that these subarctic systems are subject to comparable interannual and climatic sea ice variabilities. Many questions motivating oceanographic research in the Canadian Arctic could also be addressed through research in subarctic ice-covered environments. For example, the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as the Saguenay Fjord share many characteristics with coastal Arctic marine ecosystems: they are seasonally ice-covered, they receive important amount of freshwater from rivers, they host polynias (i.e. regions of open water even at the heart of winter), they host a rich and diverse ecosystem and they play important economic and social roles for Canadians and local communities (e.g. fishing, potential for oil and gas exploration, tourisms, etc.) The establishment of this research program on the oceanography of subarctic coastal marine systems is motivated by the negative climatic trend of sea ice in subarctic Eastern Canada, by the relevance of studying subarctic ice-covered marine ecosystems to address fundamental oceanographic questions related to boreal seas, by the limited wintertime observations available and, by the importance of Canadian subarctic waters for fisheries, tourism industry, shipping and potential for oil and gas exploration. The program is intended to carry out extensive field samplings in subarctic Canada to better understand the distribution and evolution of water properties such as temperature, salinity, nutrients, ice, etc.This research should help make future decisions about our marine environment with potential direct impacts to society and economy.