Grants and Contributions

This collaborative initiative will provide and facilitate strategic direction, leadership, and funding to help address knowledge gaps surrounding what is driving the changes in barren-ground caribou abundance and what the future holds. The team sets out to publish a collaborative special report comparing the barren-ground caribou herds to support decision-making in the NWT and beyond. This will be achieved through funding research and monitoring projects that are traditional knowledge-based, science-based and/or projects that combine approaches, including community-led monitoring projects, focusing on barren-ground caribou herds that are entirely or partially within the NWT.

We propose new research on forest management near Teslin, Yukon to design and test timber harvest and revegetation treatments to direct trajectories of forest recovery from disturbance towards desirable ecological outcomes that support community resilience and well-being. Teslin is at an ideal stage to serve as a model system for community adaptation to climate change and fire risk in northern boreal forests, and the learning that results from this project will be of great value to other northern communities facing similar challenges

Expanding on recent water quality monitoring work by the First Nation of Nacho-Nyak Dun (FNNND) in collaboration with researchers at Carleton University, the project aimst to further develop FNNND’s capacity for continuous (automated) monitoring of key water quality parameters to ensure extreme conditions are observed, such as large pulses of sediment in streamwater following rain events over disturbed watersheds and during breaches of settling ponds from placer mine sites. The focus of continuous water quality monitoring will be on total suspended solids and water temperature, which are critical indicators of Chinook Salmon and Arctic Grayling habitat. Additional objectives include analysis and mapping of the cumulative impacts of landscape disturbances on water quality across the southern traditional territory of the FNNND as confirmed within our modern-day treaty agreement.

This project aims to build climate change decision-making capacity within the Kluane First Nation (KFN) community with a researcher-led and community supported participatory approach. In the short term, the project will engage KFN citizens to express how their livelihoods and relationships with the land are currently impacted by climate change, and to foster partnerships and co-learning opportunities between KFN and climate change researchers to empower KFN citizens in environmental stewardship. Longer term, the project will generate accessible, high resolution climate change scenarios for the Kluane region.

This project will teach youth (16-30) who live in a selected Arctic community what podcasting is about, how to create podcasts on location, build and supply content that will be edited for inclusion into three Can Geo EXPLORE podcast series, to be launched on the Can Geo podcast distribution network in February 2024. By sharing stories from the north from a northern perspective, greater awareness and knowledge is built and distributed through the expansive Canadian Geographic digital platform.

The project will provide the scientific evidence base to quantify the impacts of changes in the nature, extent, seasonality, and character of all things snow and ice and provide plans and strategies for Nunatsiavummiut and Nunavimmiut to manage future change.The project will undertake research co-created with Inuit investigators and partners, to understand changes in the ice, water, ecosystems, and animal habitats in the Torngat Mountains National Park.

This project will work across a range of disciplines and knowledge systems including Inuit knowledge, community wellness, population health, environmental health and epidemiology, veterinary medicine and animal health, social science and anthropology to answer questions critical to supporting community wellbeing in Nunavut, including: How can Inuit country food knowledge be shared to support country food preparation,
preservation, food safety, and good health? What are community research priorities related to environmental health and One Health? How can research methods and research knowledge be shared within Nunavut to strengthen research capacity across disciplines, and ultimately harness research as a tool to support community priorities and community wellbeing?

This project proposes to study how the combined effects of warming temperatures and permafrost thaw affect the growth of dominant boreal trees in northern Canada. Trees capture a record of their environmental conditions and growth responses in their annual rings. By measuring tree-rings, we can infer mechanisms driving growth changes. The project will combine coupled time series of climate, tree-ring growth, and permafrost thaw from a unique set of permafrost monitoring sites across a latitudinal gradient in the Mackenzie Valley River, Canada.

The grant supports 3 participants and 1 instructor from for Canadian Institutions to attend the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) training school at Lantmäteriet in Gävle, Sweden from July 3-7, 2023. The training school is targeted at Early Career Researchers (e.g., graduate students and postdocs) with goals of knowledge transfer and to foster networking amongst their peers and with international experts in GIA and related field

Earth’s Barren-ground Caribou Education Program will engage youth across Canada to learn more about the importance of caribou to Indigenous peoples in the North. The project will advance knowledge of the Arctic to improve environmental stewardship related to barren ground caribou and the intersectional impacts of climate change and community wellness.