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Tuesday June 2 2015 11 Smiths Landing First Nation P.O. Box 1470 Fort Smith NT X0E0P0 Ph 867 872-4950 Fax 867 872-5154 Smiths Landing First Nation would like to congratulate the 2015 graduates on their academic achievements. 2015 Congratulations PWK Graduates A wish for the graduate Hope your future blooms bright with success. Congratulations Fort Smith Health and Social Services Authority 867 872-6200 Environmental research in NWT gets 3.2M boost Funding for Laurier-GNWT partnership to enhance research infrastructure ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH By MEAGAN WOHLBERG Living laboratories and research stations across the Northwest Territories are getting a boost into modernity with a 3.2-million award to build and purchase infrastructure and technology that will further ongoing cold region environmental research. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation funding will go towards Wilfrid Laurier Uni- versitys Changing Arctic Network CANet research team to support its continued part- nership with the territorial government which has seen the two parties cooperate for decades on research that aligns with commu- nity priorities on environmental monitoring in the territory. This is building on our existing work under the GNWT-Laurier partnership in the NWT at a number of sites where were already working on these living laboratories said Dr. Philip Marsh a hydrologist and profes- sor at Laurier and Canada Research Chair in Cold Regions Water Science. Its a massive investment into the NWT. Those living labs include over 20 research stations across the territory from the decade- old site at Scotty Creek near Fort Simpson to Baker Creek near Yellowknife all the way to the Mackenzie Delta where Marsh runs two long-term eld sites near Inuvik on either side of the treeline. CANet is also proposing new research sta- tions in the three major deltas - the Peace- Athabasca Delta in Alberta the Slave River Delta in the southern NWT and the Mack- enzie Delta near the Arctic Ocean. As well new research is blossoming in ac- cordance with the inux of oil and gas inter- ests in the Sahtu region. In the Central Mackenzie were proposing something near the Norman Wells area that would be strongly linked to future possibili- ties of fracking and trying to understand the waterresourcesinthatareabetterMarshsaid. Some of the money will also help enhance technologies at existing laboratories run by Environment and Natural Resources in Yel- lowknife Norman Wells Fort Simpson Inu- vik and Wekweeti. Thats supplementing whats already there to enhance the ability of those labs so some of the things that we cant do out in the eld then well do in those labs Marsh said. The funding will also pay for a wide array of infrastructure and technology related to an equally diverse crew of scientists study- ing everything from climate science to sh biology hydrology and ecology. That will include for example instrumen- tation to measure carbon uxes between the atmosphere and land surface to determine if the environment is taking up or releasing carbon unmanned aerial systems or drones to do remote sensing activities equipment for taking sediment cores from lakes for his- torical analysis hydrological instrumenta- tion to measure streamow during difcult times like spring breakup ground penetrat- ing radar for understanding changes in per- mafrost and much more. Of timely interest Marsh noted the pur- chase also includes cosmic ray sensors that can give measurements of soil moisture or snow cover over a fairly large area which could be useful for re predictions. These actually use satellite communication to show the data in real time on a webpage so for re predictions you would be able to have real-time estimates of soil moisture so youd know when certain areas were getting extremely dry he said. Marsh suspects the research team received thefundingpartlybecauseoftheurgencyposed by climate change which is impacting Cana- dasNorthmorequicklythananyotherregion but mainly due to the strong active partner- ship between the university and government. Because of the partnership this was done in full collaboration with the GNWT so we had a lot of input from various groups about what are the key questions and what does the government need especially with devolu- tion to answer some of the questions people are asking and to address important policy questions as well Marsh said. The science is unique - and obviously high quality since its being funded - but we also have this really unique connection to a ter- ritorial government that ensures the science is going to make its way into public policy. More than 15 million in operating and in- frastructurefundinghasbeensecuredforNWT research through Laurier over the past several decades and more than 50 graduate and un- dergraduate students have been trained in the territorywith20morestudentsslatedfor2015. Philip Marsh sets up a data logger used to record hydrological and meteorological instruments during spring melt at Trail Valley Creek a watershed 50 km north of Inuvik. PhotocourtesyofPhilipMarsh