Research grants cover most of these expenses, but the geography graduate student welcomes the $15,000 she won as this year’s master’s-level recipient of the Garfield Weston Award for Northern Research. The money will help cover her tuition fees, books and living expenses. "It was definitely nice to get it."

The award is one of many scholarships presented by the Canadian Northern Studies Trust on behalf of the .

Right: Liz Miller on a dig

Miller is the second 91��ɫ geography graduate student to win it in two years. Last year, Anna Abnizova (BSc Spec. Hons. '05, MSc '07) was the doctoral-level recipient.

Both students are researching northern wetlands under the supervision of Arctic hydrologist Kathy Young, a geography professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Last week, Miller returned to Toronto after three months studying the water flow of two hill streams that drain into the Polar Bear Pass wetland. It was her third trip to the North, her first to conduct her own research.

In the summer of 2009, Abnizova chose her as a field assistant to measure water levels, surface area and carbon fluxes in wetland ponds fed by snowmelt in this protected wildlife sanctuary.

Left: Liz Miller out 'fishing'

Their research adds to a growing understanding of the effect of climate change on the North. Polar Bear Pass is an oasis of vegetation in the middle of a polar desert. Its plant life nourishes insects, migratory birds and mammals, from lemming and fox to muskox and caribou, not to mention the polar bears that migrate through this protected wildlife area. That plant life depends on the sustainability of the wetland ponds, on the snowmelt and water flow.

Miller’s love of nature began as a child growing up in rural New Brunswick. She helped her father garden and went on camping and hiking trips across Canada with her parents. Unsure what to study after high school in Toronto, she enrolled at 91��ɫ because the Environmental Science Program offered such variety. She could take biology, geography, ecology and conservation and learn about everything from soils and hydrology to plants and animals. Her first taste of the Arctic came after third year when she helped Professor Rick Bello measure carbon release from peatlands in Churchill, Manitoba.

But, until Abnizova invited her to be a field assistant last year, Miller never imagined returning to the Arctic. For three years after earning a bachelor of science in 2006, she had hopped from one government contract to another. She still hasn’t narrowed her interest to a single field, but can boast a wealth of experience in conservation – assessing wetlands, mapping endangered-plant sites, doing surveys of red-shouldered hawks and forest inventories, evaluating the health of streams, restoring wetlands and planting trees.

Right: Rifle-totaing Liz Miller takes no chances in Polar Bear Pass

This week, Miller climbed aboard yet another plane to see Europe for the first time. In three weeks, she’ll return to finish her master’s degree and then decide whether to do a doctorate.

After witnessing the wildlife – caribou in particular – in Polar Bear Pass, she may branch into a broader investigation of the relationship between physical geography (land and water) and the biological community. “I like figuring out why plants grow where they grow and animals are where they are.”

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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For six days in mid-August aboard the Lyubov Orlova (right), a renovated Russian passenger ship operated by Inuit-owned Cruise North, leading Arctic hydrologists, oceanographers and climatologists from every circumpolar nation will share their latest research with each other – and with northern communities – as participants in the . In four packed days, they will deliver 50 papers, addressing the theme of managing hydrological uncertainty in high-latitude environments, a reference to the challenge of understanding the impact of global warming on Arctic water systems.

“It is the first time terrestrial hydrologists and oceanographers have officially come together for the purpose of sharing what they know,” says Young, the first woman to organize this biannual conference of the in 34 years.

The idea for such an exchange arose at the NRB’s 16th conference in northern Russia two years ago. Hydrologists, who study inland water systems, were curious to know the effect of diminishing sea ice on water loss into the atmosphere and as runoff into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Left: Kathy Young

Rising temperatures and melting sea ice have brought more fog, rain, snow and extreme weather in the North. When the rain coincides with spring snowmelt, as it did in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, last year, flash floods occur, ripping through permafrost and hurling sediment into coastal waters. In polar oceans, disappearing sea ice and more open water have resulted in storm surges that blow further inland and are battering places like the Mackenzie River Delta.

A highlight of the trip will be a public meeting between scientists and residents of Pangnirtung who want to find out more about the flash flood that whacked the village last year. In minutes, it tore out two bridges, leaving half the village stranded and without power, and carved a channel through permafrost right down to the bedrock. The volume of water overwhelmed the sewage plant which overflowed and contaminated the pristine Pangnirtung Fiord, home to beluga and narwhal whales.

Right: Pangnirtung declared a state of emergency after a flash flood tore out bridges in June 2008 Photo from iglootalk.com.

Both climate change and increased human activity in Arctic regions have made estimating water budgets, water chemistry and hydrological modelling difficult, leading to uncertainty for scientists, policy-makers, water managers and northern residents, says Young.

“Northern water systems have been poorly quantified and sparsely observed,” she says. “If we want to estimate future changes in our northern basins with more certainty, we need to keep improving our data-collection processes and modelling strategies.”

She has scheduled the delivery of 50 papers over an intense four days on a range of topics, including predicting precipitation, ocean interactions and modelling climate change. Some are very topical, and others have clear real-world applications, as papers on:

• the need to monitor runoff from the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet;
• the economic implications of later freezing and earlier break up of ice on northern lakes;
• and the importance of estimating runoff correctly before you design stream crossings for oil and gas lines.

There are two keynote speakers. Robie Macdonald (right), a renowned Arctic oceanographer with the federal Institute of Ocean Sciences, will talk about what happens when freshwater rivers and streams meet the polar salt sea. Larry Hinzman, an Arctic hydrologist and director of Alaska’s International Arctic Research Center, will discuss the need to understand atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic processes and their effects on the global climate.

Young raised $150,000 in kind and in cash from government, research agencies, corporate sponsors and private family foundations for this symposium, $40,000 of which came from Environment Canada’s Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre.

With those dollars, Young has made sure scientists from every circumpolar nation – Russia, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark (Greenland), the United States and Canada – can participate.

They sail next Wednesday from Iqaluit, Nunavut, up the east coast of Baffin Island to Pangnirtung and end their journey at Kuujjuak, Nunavik, Aug. 18. Along the way, they will meet Inuit elders and regional politicians, visit Auyuittuq National Park and an abandoned whaling station at Kekerten, Nunavuk, and watch for walruses, polar bears and Arctic birds.

Right: Walruses at Monumental Island. Photo courtesy of Cruise North.

Young has corralled veteran scientists who have spent their entire careers observing the Arctic to present at the conference, including:

• Terry Prowse, an Arctic hydrologist at the Water & Climate Impacts Research Centre in British Columbia, who will talk about the ecological and economic implications of rapid changes when freshwater ice freezes and breaks up on northern lakes:
• Ming-ko Woo, an Arctic hydrologist at McMaster University, who calls for more collaborative research on the mutual influences of polar seas and northern hydrology;
• Oddbjørn Bruland, a snow hydrologist at Norway’s Statkraft Energy, one of the largest hydropower producers in Europe, who will describe ENKI, a hydrological forecasting system of snowcover and snowmelt runoff, crucial to estimating future power-generating capacity;
• Douglas Kane, an Arctic hydrologist at Alaska’s Water & Environmental Research Center, who stresses the need to know more about runoff in ungauged northern basins before proceeding with the design of stream crossings necessary for oil and gas development;
• and Bent Hasholt, a glaciologist at Copenhagen’s Institute of Geography & Geology, who will emphasize the need to monitor meltwater, erosion and sediment transport flowing to the sea from different parts of the fast-melting Greenland Ice Sheet.

Young is also presenting a paper suggesting that, as yet, no clear trend in long-term climatic signals can be established at Polar Bear Pass, a Bathurst Island wildlife sanctuary in the High Arctic she has been studying.

Also attending the conference as observers are two 91��ɫ graduate students in geography, PhD candidate Anna Abnizova (left), who helped organize the conference, and master’s candidate Jane Assini (right).

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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