The documentary examines the toll climate change has taken on Iceland’s glaciers, land, flora, fauna, fish, economy and people. The film also includes exclusive footage of the recent eruptions of Fagradalsfjall, an active volcano only 40 kilometres from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík.

The virtual event will be moderated by EUC Professor and Associate Dean Philip Kelly, with opening remarks from Hlynur Guðjónsson, the ambassador of the Embassy of Iceland in Ottawa.

Panellists include: filmmaker Terry, producer Melanie Martyn and EUC Professor Kathy Young.

Terry is a documentary filmmaker, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an instructor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. This film completes his trilogy of documentaries revealing the impacts of climate change on the Arctic and Antarctic. The two previous films in the series – The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009) and The Polar Explorer (2011) – have been aired on CBC in Canada and released in the U.S. by PBS, as well as screened at United Nations climate summits.

Martyn makes her documentary film-producing debut with The Changing Face of Iceland. A devoted environmentalist and long-time colleague of Terry’s, she is excited to have been given this opportunity to contribute to his work with the United Nations.

Young is a physical geographer and hydrologist whose work has focused on wetland and snow hydrology in northern Canadian environments. More recently, she has been exploring the impact of dust and volcanic ash on the hydrology of slopes and wetlands in Iceland.

To register for the event, visit .

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For Swannie Chan, a fourth-year geography student who really wanted field experience, the choice was clear: “Do I want to go to Hawaii or Black Creek Village? It was a no brainer.”

In mid-August, Chan, Zoe Davis, a fourth-year environmental science student, and 16 other 91��ɫ undergraduates packed their swimming suits and hiking boots and flew to Honolulu then on to Maui. For the next eight days, they went all over the island on excursions led by geography Professors Kathy Young and Peter Vandergeest, and graduate assistant Jane Assini.

Left: Zoe Davis collecting data on the Maui coast. Photo by Dawn Ho.

Blue skies, brilliant stars and tropical heat tempered by gentle ocean breezes made for an idyllic visit – perfect for doing the research they’d come to do. For undergraduates used to textbook learning and case studies, this experience was like reality TV. “I thought it would be like “Lost”,” said Chan. Maui residents Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson eluded them, but they came home three credits richer, $3,000 poorer, keener than ever and a little changed.

For geographers, the appeal of Maui is its diverse topography. Less urbanized than Oahu but still a magnet for celebrities drawn to its sand and surf, the island features everything from desert to tropical rainforest, and volcanoes to vast beaches. On one coast, giant waves draw the world’s most fanatic surfers, on the other, coral reefs lure snorkellers to an underwater paradise. There is ample evidence of climate change – a rising sea and persistent drought – and tourism has affected the island’s culture and environment.

What a motherlode of research possibilities. The human geographers, like Chan, could study the effect of tourism on the culture. The physical geographers, like Davis (she's in the physical stream of environmental science), could analyze data they collected on beach erosion, air temperature, water quality and quantity, and wind energy.

Based in South Kihei on the southwest coast, the students piled into three vans for daily excursions and field trips to all corners of the island.

Right: Sunrise above the clouds on Mount Haleakala. Photo by Kathy Young.

“I put my research cap on when I left and actually liked doing the trip as a geographer,” said Chan, who’s travelled the world as a tourist.

The students studied beach erosion on the north and west shores, and learned about volcanoes and lava flows on a trip to Mount Haleakala, one of two volcanoes on Maui. Kathy Young woke them at 2am one morning for a bike excursion up the volcano. Along the way, they measured temperature, and wind and water quality, surfacing above the clouds in time to see the sun rise. They endured hours over rough roads to remote Hana and Lahaina to visit tropical rain forest and desert, and enjoyed a traditional luau celebration. They tasted medicinal plants in botanical gardens, saw sugar cane plantations, visited a taro farm and took an ecotour snorkelling around coral reef. “The water was so clear, I felt like I was watching TV,” said Chan. “It was one of the highlights of the trip.”

Rangers took them into Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve, 90 per cent of which is off limits to the public. This fact inspired Chan’s project – a survey of people in nearby Wailea about their knowledge of and opinion of restricted access to the reserve, a sacred Hawaiian heritage site bordering a pristine coral reef.

Davis, on the other hand, was investigating the mitigating influence of coral reefs on beach erosion and, by extension, the potential of rock walls to prevent this erosion. “It was such an amazing opportunity to be in the field on site designing my own project, analyzing my own data. There is nothing like doing your own work. You never get this experience in the classroom.”

Left: Swannie Chan interviews Ranger Joe.

For an environmental science student such as Davis, “this trip was a test to see if I could love research and hack it in the field.” After a three-and-a-half-hour trek 3,000 metres up the side of a cinder cone, getting up at 2am to see sunrise from the top of a volcano, and lugging heavy equipment then improvising when it broke, she thinks she could.

Each student had to do an individual project and a group project. “We got a taste of so many different kinds of research,” said Davis. “It can change your career. I realized if you work hard you can do some amazing things. It changed my trajectory, but not my direction.” Now she’s dreaming of doing research in the Arctic.

“The trip was once in a lifetime,” says Chan, who is majoring in geography and finishing an education degree at the same time. She intends to stick to her plans to teach primary or junior school. The Scarborough resident tried passionfruit and guava for the first time, was amazed at the brilliant night sky and loved spending every day outside. “Being able to experience nature like I did in Hawaii is something I want to take into the classroom.”

“Hawaii was a really cool trip,” says Young. “I learned so much and I think the kids were all really energized by it.”

Right: Sliding Sand Trail, Mount Haleakala. Photo by Kathy Young.

The advanced field course in physical geography is brand new. It was funded with $15,000 from the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. If Young can get more funding, next year she hopes to take geography students to another, though less balmy, volcanic island – Iceland.

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer.

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

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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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On Aug. 12, Kathy Young led 69 Arctic hydrologists, oceanographers and observers from every circumpolar nation on an expedition to Baffin Island. As chief delegate of the , the Arctic hydrologist and 91��ɫ geography professor had been planning this seven-day conference on 's Lyubov Orlova for two years. In this second of two instalments about the expedition, 91��ɫ communications officer Martha Tancock and professional photographer document excursions to spectacular Pangnirtung Fiord, a wilderness park, and an island teeming with thick-billed murres and prowled by belligerent polar bears.

Day 4 – Fiords and flowers
Saturday, Aug. 15

Jason’s wake-up brought good news: The Lyubov Orlova was proceeding up Pangnirtung Fiord (above) on schedule, we were 20 miles below the Arctic Circle, the sky was clear and sunny, and the temperature was 11°C  – ideal for a hike near Auyuittuq National Park.

Steep rocky mountain slopes delivered surprises as we cruised up the spectacular and ancient Pangnirtung Fiord – patches of purple Arctic fireweed, a frothy waterfall, a solitary cabin at its foot. Snowcapped mountains patched with glaciers glistened under an intense blue sky in the distance.

We divided into three groups: the fast walkers, who sprinted as far and as high as they could behind restless adventurer Benoit Savard then tore back down to shore, where some stripped to their underwear and leapt like Finns out of a sauna into the frigid fiord; the hikers, who strode behind ornithologist and 91��ɫ grad Elizabeth Gow (BSc Hons. ’07, MSc ’09) into the middle distance; and the “plant” walkers like me who poked around the meadow close to shore with Arctic botanist Susan Aiken (left). (Photo by Martha Tancock.)

What riches she revealed. She’d never seen a grass meadow in the Arctic before, only sedge meadows. Here she identified silky Arctic sweetgrass, which doesn’t have a scent like its sister in the south. Except for the spiky aromatic Labrador tea, which was everywhere, Arctic flowers don’t waste their precious energy on producing scents. At our feet, in spongy hummocks and around rock outcrops, we found and tasted mushrooms, crowberries and blueberries. Our guide yelped when she spotted vistortia, a sort of Arctic peanut. She showed us how Inuit women roll wicks from cotton grass and use heather for bedding. We saw caribou scat and lemming holes, raven feathers and a finch-like pippet. When some of us ventured further up the slope – keeping within eyesight of rifle-bearing sentinels – she warned us to watch out for polar bears that sometimes sleep in the cool crannies between hills. This sedgey place, though, is more home to caribou and muskoxen.

Instead of the promised wilderness picnic, we enjoyed a barbecue on deck, warmed by the noonday sun.

Evening documentaries about Arctic and Antarctic expeditions topped an afternoon of papers on modelling hydrological variables and climate change. Research scientists and “explorers” Glen Liston and Mathew Sturm and two others marked International Polar Year (IPY) by snowmobiling 4,200 kilometres across Arctic Canada. For seven weeks in March and April, they followed rivers and crossed barrens and lakes to place themselves “squarely and firmly in the nexuses that changed the Arctic.” That included retracing part of 19th-century British explorer John Franklin’s ill-fated first expedition to chart the north coast of Canada.

Left: An iceberg close to Monumental Island

The second film documented Liston and other American and Norwegian scientists on an IPY overland scientific expedition to the South Pole in 2007-2008. Along the way, Liston drilled 90 feet to get 2,000-year-old ice core samples. He was also the one who descended into a hut buried deep in the snow, unvisited since the Russians left it, chairs neatly stacked on tables, in the 1960s.

Day 5 – A monumental challenge and a Monumental polar bear
Sunday, Aug. 16

Scientists sounded a collective alarm today. There is no doubt that climate change is wreaking havoc in the Arctic, but without more data and better modelling they cannot make accurate predictions or provide a big picture of the impact. The evidence is clear. As climate warms, Yukon rivers freeze later, river ice breaks up earlier and there are more ice jams. In Alaska, sparse data makes it difficult to predict the impact of increasing drought and fires on water supply needs, fish passage and tundra travel. Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are thawing permafrost and causing landslides and soil collapse, but current data can only give a local, not a regional, picture.

Above: Thick-billed murres circle high over the cliffs of Akpatok Island

Keynote speaker Larry Hinzman, director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska, underscored their message at the end of the day. “We’ve got some huge challenges,” he said. If we are to predict the environmental impact responsibly, he said, we have to start viewing the Arctic as a system and not focus solely on our own special areas. Work has already begun on developing a circumpolar modelling system that could be ready in 10 years.

Left: From left, geography Professor Kathy Young with two 91��ɫ graduate students, PhD candidate Anna Abnizova (centre), who helped organize the conference, and master's candidate Jane Assini (right), who acted as a conference observer

We expected to see a colony of walruses on an excursion to Monumental Island in the Davis Strait today. Not a sign of them and we soon discovered why. A polar bear was swimming along the shore, disguised as a whitecap. We pulled up close and fell silent as it climbed ashore, stopping to sniff the air above and gaze in our direction then stepping nimbly over uneven rocky shelves. It was a male, according to naturalist Elizabeth Gow, because the urine stains were under its belly, not down its back legs.

Homeward bound we skirted an iceberg and got close enough to touch. On this excursion, two groups lifted bergy bits found later in Hudson Hurricanes, the cocktail of the day, concocted by bar manager Canina Clifford (BA Hons. '07, MA '08).

Day 6 – Task forces and titans
Monday, Aug. 17

We’re in luck. A calm sea and sunny weather make a trip possible to Akpatok Island in Ungava Bay. Akpa is Inuktitut for murre and there are millions nesting on the narrow ledges of the chiselled cliffs.

Right: Victor and vanquished on Akpatok Island

After final morning workshops where delegates proposed task forces on snow, precipitation and ungauged basins, conference business ended. By 1:30pm we were zooming toward the tan-coloured cliff walls shrouded in thick layers of white cloud – perfect camouflage, we discovered, for polar bears. But within minutes, we saw a mother and pup napping on the shore, then a male snacking on fallen eggs. As we motored further along the shore, a massive male ambled towards us, its front paws stained with blood. We rounded the point to see a fallen male with a deep gash on its forearm. We had just missed a clash of titans. We pitied the vanquished even more when Gow predicted his certain death. On the way back, we saw the victor cleaning his paws.

That evening, as the Lyubov Orlova chugged towards Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, our final destination, we dressed up for the captain’s dinner and toasted Kathy Young many times over for a job well done.

Above: Sunrise over Hudson Strait

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to give the group a tour of the Eastern Arctic while hosting its biennial conference. 91��ɫ communications officer Martha Tancock and professional photographer

Day 1 – Arrival in Iqaluit
Wednesday, Aug. 12

Montreal was so hot and humid the morning of our departure, that it was hard to imagine that in less than three hours, First Air would jet us into overcast, misty weather almost 20 degrees cooler. As the First Air jet lifted off from Trudeau Airport and climbed to 31,000 feet, we left behind a suburban landscape dotted with turquoise pools and flew up the middle of Quebec following sandy oxbow rivers into a roadless, lake-studded green and grey expanse of Canadian Shield.

Not long after sampling Arctic char, we landed in Iqaluit, “place of many fish” and capital of Nunavut. The modular airport tower was a beacon of orange against a grey sky. Two school buses took us to the local museum where Earle Baddaloo, Nunavut’s assistant deputy minister of environment, welcomed us and urged us to taste muskox burgers and visit the “very striking and very northern” Legislative Assembly, which we did. Top of his mind was the European Union’s decision to ban seal. The people of Nunavut “are not going to sit back and sulk” but will search for alternative markets, he insisted. Also greeting us was Mary Ellen Thomas, executive director of the Nunavut Research Institute, which supports 150 social, natural and health science research projects in the north.

After CBC North interviewed 91��ɫ geography Professor Kathy Young about the conference, we toured Nunavut's Legislative Assembly, an airy igloo-shaped chamber built of British Columbia pine and decorated with Inuit prints, weaving and carvings, including a mace fashioned from a narwhal tusk. Our tour guide was Seané d’Argencourt (right), the first page from Nunavut to serve in Canada’s House of Commons.

The bumpy ride to the harbour took us past the dump, stacks of crushed cars and mounds of used tires ­– a sight common to communities perched on impenetrable permafrost. At the water, we pulled on raincoats for our first spurt in inflated rubber Zodiacs to the waiting Lyubov Orlova. The ship is named after the Marilyn Monroe of the early Russian screen. Lyubov is Russian for “love” so we were sailing on the love boat out of Frobisher Bay.

Day 2 – Icebergs
Thursday, Aug. 13

At 7:05am, the voice of Cruise North expedition leader Jason crackled across public announcement speakers in each cabin. He listed longitude and latitude coordinates, temperature and weather conditions. Breakfast would be served at 7:30. To port, he added, you will see icebergs. Sure enough, through my porthole I spotted a compact blue-veined berg, then another. Many of us clamoured on deck for a better view.

Conference delegates gathered for a packed agenda of presentations in the forward lounge. Mid-morning, while they heard about snow modelling and the challenges involved in measuring snow cover, depth and density, I visited the ship's bridge. Here taciturn Russian naval officers monitored radar, compasses and other wayfinding instruments to navigate safely through treacherous northern waters. After a while, one pointed over the bow. “Izeboorg,” he said. Through impenetrable fog, a faint grey horizontal line slowly emerged, then defining edges and finally the entire monster. Despite being the size of Toronto's downtown core, it moved with enough speed to create a headwind that blew the snow off its saddleback.

Stealthy and fast, it was easy to imagine how it could take a captain by surprise in the middle of the north Atlantic at night. In fact, one delegate guessed it had calved from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, the same one that spawned the iceberg that sunk the Titanic.

Meanwhile, the conference turned its focus on the effect of earlier ice breakups and later freeze-ups on Arctic lakes and rivers. The day was capped with a keynote talk by Robie Macdonald, research scientist at Fisheries & Oceans Canada's Institute of Ocean Sciences. Internationally recognized for his work on contaminant transport in oceans, he contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore. Macdonald was invited to this conference to share an oceanographer’s perspective – a major goal of the conference – of what happens when freshwater runoff from land and melting sea ice interact with currents in the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Will the Arctic Sea become a seasonably open ocean? Yes. By 2013? He's not sure. (Read more in his International Polar Year .)

Day 3 – Bones to see and to pick
Friday, Aug. 14

In the Arctic we must be flexible, say our Cruise North hosts. An unexpected detour overnight meant the 5am trek to the Kekerten Island whaling station would be postponed to 11am. Without missing a beat, hydrologists and oceanographers gave scheduled talks on the rapid rate of sea-ice shrinkage, tracing the route of fresh meltwater from Greenland into the north Atlantic and changes in ice cover in the Baltic Sea.

At 10:30am, we donned rain gear and rubber boots, packed hiking boots and cameras, for an excursion to Kekerten, an abandoned whaling station. Before we could land, guides armed with rifles scouted the area for polar bears. All clear, we scurried ashore and followed boardwalks to historical plaques and skeletal remains of all sorts – a building, rusty vats, a whale’s giant skull and 100-year-old human bones scattered around their weathered wooden coffins. Off the beaten path, we bounced like moonwalkers across spongy tundra – a blanket of green moss, white and yellow lichen, and fluffy, white cotton grass – and climbed craggy rocks coated in the black tripe de roche lichen that ill-fated 19th-century British explorer John Franklin's starving men ate and crawling with the witchy fingers of Arctic willow, to get a better view of a calm, misty Cumberland Sound.  

Later, we visited Pangnirtung for a meeting between scientists and village elders, an anticipated highlight of the trip. In June 2008, the village declared a state of emergency after a flash flood knocked out two bridges and carved a channel through permafrost down to the bedrock. Through a translator, nine elders talked about this and other local signs of climate change – glaciers disappearing in Cumberland Sound, high tides, moss washing into the sea. Scientists said permafrost is melting, glaciers are shrinking, sea ice is disappearing, water levels are rising, winds are changing and rivers are flooding around the circumpolar North. Both elders and scientists shared the opinion that we must all adapt to climate change.

Back on board Lyubov Orlova, the crew briefed us about the next day’s excursion – a hike to Auyuittuq National Park in the stunning Pangnirtung Fiord (right). Read about it in YFile's next issue.

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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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