Skip to main content

Winter Carbon Losses in Wetland Ecosystems project funded!

Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Catherine McKenna, has announced the recipient projects of the highly competitive “Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada” initiative.

Two members of the Laurentian University Permafrost Research Laboratory, Dr. Pascale Roy-Leveillee and Dr. Nathan Basiliko, are part of one of the only nine funded projects announced today.

The project, Winter Carbon Losses in Wetland Ecosystems under Current and Future Climates, was awarded $468,500 over a period of three years. The project is led by Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad of University of Waterloo’s Water Institute, and the co-investigators on this award are Pascale Roy-Leveillee and Nathan Basiliko (Laurentian University), William Quinton (Wilfrid Laurier University), Christina Smeaton (Grenfell Campus, Memorial University), Philippe Van Cappellen, Jonathan Price, and Nancy Goucher (University of Waterloo). The Canadian Forest Service Great Lakes Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada is a supporting organization through Kara Webster.

Peat cores from several canadian locations, including sites in Yukon, NWT, Manitoba, and Ontario, will be included in the study.

Project description: High latitude cold regions, including Arctic and northern areas of Canada, are warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with the greatest warming occurring during the winter. Canada’s temperate to subarctic wetlands and permafrost peatlands hold large stores of carbon which are susceptible to loss under future climate warming scenarios. Therefore, understanding the factors which regulate the processes controlling greenhouse gas emissions during the non-growing season is critical for predicting the fate of these vulnerable carbon stocks and for creating climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. With a focus on these critical ecosystems, the project brings together Canadian leaders from multiple disciplines from across universities with federal government scientists and policy makers to determine the drivers of non-growing season carbon cycling, develop process-based environmental models, and estimate CO2 emissions. In doing so, the project will address the knowledge gaps on emissions to provide data and tools to evaluate the impact of winter warming mitigation in controlling carbon losses from pan-Canadian wetland ecosystems.

Do you want to join the permafrost team at Laurentian University? We have several openings, please see our list of open funded positions.

Past lab member Emma Ciric sends news from Svalbard

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 61247255_295612628047353_3015025251760209920_n.jpg
Emma contemplates glacier near Reindalen

Graduated lab member Emma Ciric continues to work with permafrost as she pursues her academic career. Emma is working on her M.Sc. at the University of Algarve, in Portugal, and is completing her thesis research in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Hodson from UNIS, in Svalbard. She sent us some quick news and pictures: ”I moved to Svalbard in January 2019 and will live here until September 2019 to

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 61474450_303447943905601_3636313247746883584_n-e1562772161900-800x931.jpg
Emma and her classmate Mariana drill to collect permafrost samples in Adventalen

complete my Master’s thesis research on methane escape features in permafrost. I’ve been collecting water samples from around central Spitsbergen and will compare them to geographical features using GIS. ”

Working towards a Canadian Permafrost Network, in Whitehorse

 

Some of the people who attended the Permafrost Research Network meeting in Whitehorse

 

Pascale (and Florent) travelled from Churchill to Whitehorse on October 12-14 to participate in the writing of a Strategic Network Grant application focused on permafrost.

Permafrost researchers from across the country are joining efforts with government, community, and industry partners to propose a network that will align permafrost research with decision-making, help fill geographical knowledge gaps in the Canadian North, train the next generation of experts, and  position Canada as a leader in permafrost science.

The meeting was a dynamic and productive event, where new connections were made and existing ones solidified, and where good progress was made towards a network of fruitful collaborations reaching for common goals. All in all an exciting week-end!

 

Hard at work during a break out session

Entrevue à Radio-Canada

Pascale était en entrevue à Radio-Canada le 22 octobre 2018 pour parler de sa recherche sur le pergélisol avec Caroline Borduas et Isabelle Fleury.

Pascale avec Caroline Borduas au studio de radio-Canada à Sudbury

Voici les liens vers l’entrevue (en deux temps) partie 1 et partie 2.   Bonne écoute!