Project Title: Beluga Tagging in the Arctic
Project Leader: Mike Hammill, Fisheries and Oceans Canada hammillm@dfo-mpo.gc.ca (418) 775-0580
Description: The project will provide information on beluga movements, critical habitat and distribution. This information will be used in ocean forecast models to learn more about water currents and masses. Interactions with hunters will improve understandings of beluga habits and combine traditional and western scientific knowledge.
Location(s): Hudson Bay waters surrounding Nunavik
Project Title: Effects of Global Warming on Polar Bears, Seals and Whales
Project Leader: Steven Ferguson, Fisheries and Oceans Canada fergusonsh@dfo-mpo.gc.ca 204-983-5057
Description: This research project will find out how marine mammals will adapt to global warming and whether they will be able to survive into the future. The project team will study the relationship between warming temperatures and changes in where polar bears, seals, and whales will survive and reproduce, and how many will remain. The team will use satellite telemetry to tell us how they move, tissue samples from hunters to tell us what they eat, and new technologies like genetics and modeling to tell us what the future will be like. Knowing how polar bears, seals, and whales adapt to shrinking sea ice may help save them and the Inuit culture that relies on them for food.
Location(s): Hudson Bay
Project Title: Impacts of Severe Arctic Storms and Climate Change on Coastal Areas
Project Leader: William Perrie, Fisheries and Oceans Canada perriew@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
Description: The focus of this project is to understand coastal oceanographic processes in the Southern Beaufort Sea, and the related waters of the Western Canadian Arctic, driven by intense storms and severe weather. This area is important because the use of the coastal marine and terrestrial environment by Canadian Northerners is an integral part of their life style, and these environments are being impacted by coastal erosion processes, related to marine storms that tend to be growing stronger.
Location(s): Beaufort Sea, and coastal areas of the Yukon and Northwest Territories
Project Title: Inuit Sea Ice Use and Occupancy Project
Project Leader: Claudio Aporta, Carleton University claudio_aporta@carleton.ca (613) 520-2600 ext. 4143
Description: This project’s aim is to provide a broad snapshot of Inuit knowledge and use of sea ice in the Canadian Arctic. The project also allocates resources to contribute to scientific, educational, and policy initiatives that seek to incorporate Inuit and scientific knowledge in investigating, or addressing environmental phenomena and/or change.
Location(s): Nunavut, Nunavik
Project Title: The Impacts of Oil and Gas Activity on Peoples in the Arctic
Project Leader: Dawn Bazely, York University dbazely@yorku.ca
Description: Over centuries, people in the Arctic have learned to adapt and thrive in an uncertain, harsh environment. Today, change is occurring at an unprecedented rate. Local peoples' capacity to cope and adapt is under pressure. Natural and social scientists will join with members of Arctic communities in Canada, Norway, Alaska and Russia to study the impacts of oil and gas activity on the health, traditional livelihoods, economic development and ecosystem change in the Arctic. The research will develop a broad range of community-driven grassroots indicators and methods to assess future change. The research will also broaden international collaboration and communication among circumpolar communities through focus group workshops on oil and gas impacts in local communities.
Location(s): Various locations throughout Canada’s territories
Project Title: Communities in the Changing Arctic
Project Leader: Barry Smit, University of Guelph bsmit@uoguelph.ca 519-824-4120
Description: The aim of this project is to systematically assess the vulnerability of communities across the Arctic to changing environmental conditions and identify opportunities to enhance adaptive capacities to sustain their natural resources, livelihoods and well-being. The research will draw on scientific, local and traditional knowledge to identify conditions that contribute to more sustainable northern communities in the circumpolar region.
Location(s): Labrador, Northwest Territories and Nunavut
Project Title: Arctic Resiliency and Diversity
Project Leader: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami with universities and Northern organizations info@itk.ca (613) 238-8181
Description: Northern Aboriginal organizations will guide the development of a study on Arctic resiliency and diversity to examine the factors that determine resiliency in northern communities, and how northern communities are adapting to a changing world. This study will consider how the health of northern communities is expected to evolve with the changing climate, as well as environmental, technological and social changes in the North.
Location(s): Northern Canada
Project Title: Arctic Weather and Environmental Prediction Initiative
Project Leader: Gilbert Brunet, Environment Canada gilbert.brunet@ec.gc.ca 514-421-4771
Description: This initiative involves numerical modeling and data assimilation studies of various components of Arctic weather and climate systems, such as snow processes, polar clouds, sea-ice and ozone layer. The objective of this initiative is to develop and validate a regional Numerical Weather Prediction model over the Arctic. This model will help enhance our weather and environmental forecasting capabilities in polar regions, and improve our understanding of the Arctic and its influence on world weather.
Location(s): In several provinces, through collaboration between government, university and northern communities
Project Title: Climate Variability and Change Effects on Chars in the Arctic
Project Leader: James Reist, Fisheries and Oceans Canada reistj@dfo-mpo.gc.ca 204 983 5032
Description: This project is focused on understanding the effects of climate change on char (species of freshwater fish) biodiversity, how this responds to climate change, and the consequences of this to human beings. The work also examines linkages between climate change and mercury bioaccumulation.
Location(s): Nunavut, Nunavik, Labrador and the Northwest Territories