ONEPlanet DTP - Northern Perspectives: community-based monitoring for tracing environmental change in the Canadian Arctic (OP2144)

The Canadian Arctic is undergoing profound change in response to rapid climate change. Increased rates of coastal erosion, sea-ice loss and changes to dominant weather patterns not only have important implications on climate feedbacks, but critically threaten indigenous communities that have lived and thrived for millenia across the Arctic Coast1. Communities and government agencies urgently require tools to aid in assessing coastal hazards and environmental conditions (e.g. ground structure, air quality) across wide spatial extents and time.
In this project, we aim to support and help develop community based efforts2 to assess and protect the coastal environment, and health of peoples that live there. You will conduct fieldwork at coastal communities (e.g. Tuktoyaktuk) and sites on the southern Beaufort Sea in North-Western Canada. Co-learning with members of the community, you will provide training with field equipment and instrumentation to teach locals how to gather high quality environmental data (atmospheric, water and ground) at susceptible locations. You will help develop and validate lower cost instruments that can be left with community volunteers with the aim of establishing sensor and instrument networks. You will be supported by colleagues from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) that have observed and monitored the rapid changes occuring along the Beaufort Sea coast for several decades providing access to unprecedented historical datasets. You will receive full fieldwork training and be supported in any laboratory techniques needed, as well as being fully supported to attend international conferences and dissemination of your research through publication. The higher spatial and temporal resolution datasets that you will help create and collaboratively maintain will help guide strategic decision-making and support understanding of long-term environmental change in the region, aiding future policy decisions and enhancing community resilience.
References:
UN Environment Programme storyboard on Northern Issues 1https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/74bf8d1540c542b7a444a5a2ba1559e2
2Tuktoyaktuk Community Climate Resilience Project: https://vimeo.com/376275443