Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

In Canada, conservation and management of aquatic habitat is governed by the principle of No Net Loss (NNL) of the productive capacity of fish habitat. Thus, when fish habitat is altered, disrupted or destroyed by human activities, habitat compensation is required to offset the reduction in the ecosystem's productive capacity. Reviews of habitat compensation projects, however, indicate that because of our limited understanding of fish habitat needs, only a minority of compensation projects achieve NNL. Habitat compensation projects are essentially ecological experiments, from which we can advance our knowledge, and should be treated as such; thus, it is important that fish habitat management team up with aquatic scientists in compensation projects to improve our understanding of the productive capacity of aquatic habitats as well as our ability to design and evaluate compensation ""experiments.""Diavik Diamond Mines, Inc. (DDMI) has proposed a pair of compensation projects in the Lac de Gras (NWT) watershed that involve increasing access to and connectivity among small headwater lakes, their lake-outlet streams, and Lac de Gras itself. We are proposing, in collaboration with DDMI, an interdisciplinary research program that integrates fisheries and hydraulic science to improve both our knowledge and the defensibility of habitat management in northern Canada. Three PhD students will incorporate Before-After-Control-Impact designs into their field research, combined with field and laboratory experiments and computational modeling, to assess production gains resulting from these projects and advance our understanding of the ecology and life history of northern fishes, the performance of nature-like fishways, and the functioning of Barrenlands ecosystems. The proposed study brings together DDMI and the University of Alberta (and Fisheries and Oceans Canada), but it is also a collaborative research effort among three complementary investigators representing freshwater ecology, arctic fisheries, and hydraulic engineering. Our study will improve the state of ""compensation science"" in Canada and train much needed HQPs in northern aquatic science.