Authors:
Youth contributors: Adrena McDonald, Deagan Lacorne, Ella Bertelsen, Gabriel Brost, Hayden Chapple, Kaize Roach-Ashoona, Leora Rabesca, Neo Barnaby, Kristyanna Camsell, Odin Mcdonald-Silastiak, Peyton Simba
Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI): Dana Redhuis, Assistant Research Scientist in Geospatial Ecology
Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC): Rebecca (Becky) Edwards – Advanced Remote Sensing Analyst, Aaron Sneep – Remote Sensing Analyst
Ecology North: Brandon Pludwinski, Education Program Manager.
Northern Youth Leadership (NYL): Steph Woodworth – Project Director, Nina Slagter – Youth Employee, Goliah Makletzoff-Cazon – Program Coordinator
Videographer: Brandon Mack
Weather: Smoky and in the 70s F (20s C) all day.
Our first day of camp found me waking up on Steph Woodworth’s couch. Steph is the Project Director for Northern Youth Leadership (NYL), a nonprofit focused on building on-the-land experiences for youth across the Northwest Territories. I blearily got up and went outside to meet Brandon for a run. It was still wild to me how just a few months ago, we had discussed organizing this camp as a hypothetical goal, and now here I was, waking up on a collaborator’s couch, with just a few hours until we met the youth who had been accepted to attend the camp.
We then began the process of getting the equipment together. Becky Edwards, an advanced remote sensing analyst from Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC), arrived, and we headed to the storage unit to make sure that we had all of the equipment—canoes, tents, packs for the youth, and all of the food that we needed for the five days that we would be fully out on the land.
We then went to B. Dene Adventures. This is a camp that NYL has partnered with for the past few years on various camps. B. Dene is located right outside of Dettah and has a large space that was perfect for holding some of our larger workshops with the youth.
From there, the youth started to arrive. The next few hours were a blur of introductions, gear checks, and setting up. We ended the day in a circle with the group, sharing introductions and laughs as everyone began to get to know each other.
The night ended with a beautiful sunset and games of flashlight tag.
Weather: Similar to yesterday, in the 70s F (20s C), though quite a bit more smoky. Nearly 100 fires were active in the NWT during this week, and monitoring FIRMS and the AQI were safety priorities.
This day began with several camp leaders and youth waking up early for a quad ride from B. Dene to the road so we could head over to where the canoes had been stored (at a boat launch in Dettah proper) and paddle them into the bay that the camp lodge was located in. After a lovely meal prepared for us by the B. Dene Adventures staff, the youth geared up for their first big day of paddling. David Brinston from the NWT Recreation and Parks service guided the group in a Paddle Canada tandem canoe course, where the youth learned basic canoe skills and paddle strokes.
The youth went back out on the water after lunch to practice canoe rescues, and everyone was grateful for the chance to get in the water on such a hot, smoky day.
After the day’s paddling was done, the group worked together to create a camp agreement—solidifying group values, community actions, responsibilities, and teamwork structure for the camp.
The day ended on a high note with moose stew for dinner and a successful Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) boundary creation workshop. This workshop, led by Brandon from Ecology North and Becky and Aaron Sneep—a DUC researcher on the Boreal team with Becky—was designed to reflect the ongoing development of IPCA committees in the Northwest Territories, with a focus on the initial step of selecting an IPCA study area.
The youth played the part of different land users as hunters, land guardians, miners, loggers, and outdoor recreation outfitters and used a variety of maps highlighting important areas to decide what to protect. The youth got into character and presented their hypothetical IPCA boundaries to a hypothetical IPCA committee. This workshop highlighted the learnings of passion and politics involved in land-based negotiations, offering valuable insights into the decision-making process. Ultimately, this activity taught the youth to analyze map data and develop informed ideas and opinions that have practical real-world implications.
Weather: Cloudy and cool, temperature in the 50-60s F (10-15 C)
Today we started out with Ecology North and MTRI’s Models and Mirrors workshop, where we used lasers against mirrors to demonstrate how active sensors collect imagery that is beneficial for wetland monitoring. (The UAVSAR, for example, was collecting imagery for the ABoVE airborne campaign in Yellowknife that day.) The youth had to work to bounce the laser against as many surfaces as possible in order to understand both how an object could be measured through radar and how dynamics such as distance, scattering, and laser strength (an unintentional variable as the batteries in the lasers began to die) affected data collection.
After lunch, the group took part in paddle drills and practiced skills like canoe lifts and how to use throw bags.
DUC then led the group in workshops focused on northern waterfowl after lunch. These activities included wetland identification and measuring the ‘wingspan’ of the participants. The youth had fun learning about which bird they would be based on their ‘wingspan’ (the length of their arms).
These workshops continued after dinner, as youth examined owl pellets. We ended the day with a walk to a nearby wetland and stories around the campfire.
MTRI’s participation in this camp was funded through the NASA ABoVE project: Informing wetland policy and management for waterfowl habitat and other ecosystem services using multi-frequency synthetic aperture radar. PI: Nancy French.
Authors:
Youth contributors: Adrena McDonald, Deagan Lacorne, Ella Bertelsen, Gabriel Brost, Hayden Chapple, Kaize Roach-Ashoona, Leora Rabesca, Neo Barnaby, Kristyanna Camsell, Odin Mcdonald-Silastiak, Peyton Simba
Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI): Dana Redhuis – Assistant Research Scientist in Geospatial Ecology, Nancy French – Senior Scientist & Technical Fellow
Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC): Rebecca (Becky) Edwards – Advanced Remote Sensing Analyst, Aaron Sneep – Remote Sensing Analyst
Ecology North: Brandon Pludwinski, Education Program Manager.
Northern Youth Leadership (NYL): Steph Woodworth – Project Director, Nina Slagter – Youth Employee, Goliah Makletzoff-Cazon – Program Coordinator
Videographer: Brandon Mack
In October 2023, Nancy French and Dana Redhuis of Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI) attended a conference to give a presentation titled “Wetland Monitoring with Satellites: Facilitating the Use of New Wetland Maps for All.” The presentation was an overview of MTRI and Ducks Unlimited Canada’s project with NASA ABoVE to conduct wetland mapping and monitoring in the ABoVE study region, with a particular focus on the Peace-Athabasca and Slave River Delta.
This conference was one of MTRI’s first major outreach opportunities within communities in the Northwest Territories, and we had two goals: 1) to share how our inundation and wetland classification maps could be beneficial for land managers, and 2) to learn how else we can better benefit communities in the Northwest Territories. We want to ensure that we’re conducting fieldwork ethically and with cultural respect, and we want to provide opportunities within the research initiatives happening in the north to communities living in the north. How could we, as external researchers, provide real and lasting positive contributions to the community?
This conference is where our team met Steph Woodworth, the project director of Northern Youth Leadership (NYL), and Brandon Pludwinski, the education program manager of Ecology North. NYL runs remote wilderness programming for youth aged 11 to 17 from across the Northwest Territories that is meant to help youth develop leadership skills, life skills, emotional resilience, and challenge themselves through positive risk-taking. Ecology North is a non-profit organization that promotes environmental education for all age levels in the Northwest Territories. We decided to set up a follow-up meeting with Steph and Brandon and found that one way that we could provide a beneficial contribution to communities in the Northwest Territories is through assisting in the creation of an on-the-land camp.
Becky Edwards, an advanced remote sensing analyst for Duck Unlimited Canada’s (DUC’s) national boreal program, and Aaron Sneep, a remote sensing analyst for DUC’s national boreal program, have been involved in this project since its initial phases and were happy to contribute to this collaboration. Goliah Makletzoff-Cazon, NYL’s project coordinator, and Nina Slagter, NYL’s youth employee, also largely contributed to the creation and administration of this camp. Brandon Mack was our final staff member, a talented videographer from Yellowknife hired by NYL to document the camp.
NYL had already begun planning an on-the-land camp in Hidden Lake Territorial Park, which is a 3,000-hectare park roughly an hour away from Yellowknife on Highway 4, in the Tłįcho (North Slave) region. Steph graciously allowed MTRI, DUC, and Ecology North to partner on this camp, with the goal of creating a curriculum that allows the youth to view wetland environments from a ‘leaf-to-orbit’ perspective. This camp’s focus was on land-based leadership and environmental education, with a curriculum designed to encourage self-growth, land stewardship, community, and responsibility. The camp’s learning goals included remote sensing resources and concepts, wetland species identification (particularly wetland types, trees, waterfowl, and macroinvertebrates), paddling (canoeing) skills, portaging, and living on the land.
Through a blend of land-based skills, the youth thrived in an immersive and empowering environment. A few of the opportunities provided through this camp include:
This camp was scheduled for August 12-18 of 2024. We decided to host the first few days at B. Dene Adventures Cultural Camp. This way we could conduct a few workshops under a roof and provide paddle training to the youth before heading out on the land. Look out for our next article, which will go into the day-to-day operations of this camp!
MTRI’s participation in this camp was funded through the NASA ABoVE project: Informing wetland policy and management for waterfowl habitat and other ecosystem services using multi-frequency synthetic aperture radar. PI: Nancy French.
After our adventures in Quebec and Greenland, it was now time for our last stop in this intense season of fieldwork. This time we were heading to the Canadian Northwest Territories (NWT). Extraordinary wildfire seasons have become a regular occurrence in the NWT. The territory’s 10-year average for the total number of fires was exceeded in 2022, with nearly 600,000 hectares burned in 256 fires. At the time, that was more than any year since the outlier season of 2014. This may seem like a lot, but 2023 was brutal and far more exceptional.
The 2023 record fire season totaled around 3.6 million hectares burned by 303 fires. About 70 percent of the territory’s population, including the capital Yellowknife, was evacuated in the summer of 2023. The current Canadian fire season is also shaping up to be one of the most extreme in the last two decades. These extreme fire seasons have a significant impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In response, our goal for this campaign was to obtain critical field observations to better estimate these emissions, so we packed our bags one last time for this summer and traveled as far north as Inuvik to begin our final data collections.
Despite the significant advances in understanding carbon emissions from boreal forest fires in recent years, there are still substantial gaps in our knowledge when it comes to high-latitude tundra fires. Field-based carbon combustion measurements from tundra fires are scarce, and although these fires have historically been less frequent than those in boreal forests, they can be substantial due to the availability of carbon-rich organic soils in these regions. Part of our team on this expedition has previous field experience with tundra fires, and we know that tussocks can be used as reference points to estimate how much of the soil organic layer was lost due to fire.
In 2023, a large tundra fire broke out near the town of Inuvik. North of the Arctic Circle, the fire is in a fairly remote area with no road or river access. So, we sampled this fire by helicopter in an effort to estimate and date carbon stocks and calculate the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Along the fire perimeter, we found different types of dominant vegetation in the tundra, ranging from the tussocks to shrublands and even sparsely treed areas.
The view of the northern landscape was mesmerizing from above! The rolling hills stretched endlessly across the horizon, while the striking polygonal soil patterns and distinctive pingos added to the captivating view. The tundra was dotted with lakes of various sizes and ancient riverbeds. With paleo specialists Atte Korhola and Jan Weckström accompanying us, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to sample a lake and study the historical fire record preserved in its sediments. We are grateful to the Aurora Research Institute and the local community for welcoming us.
After an intense week in Inuvik, our team hit the road again, this time heading south to the Scotty Creek Research Station, about 50 kilometers from Fort Simpson. We began our journey from Yellowknife to Fort Simpson, uncertain whether the ongoing fires would allow us to travel. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and the sight of the recently burned forest along the road was stark. Along the gravel road to Fort Simpson, we encountered bison, sampled some peatlands, and spent an hour waiting for a ferry. In the evening, we watched as the moon took on an intense red hue, tinted by the smoke particles in the air.
The next morning, we boarded a floatplane from the Mackenzie River to the Scotty Creek Research Station, where a friendly crew gave us a warm welcome. The research station is so isolated that it’s only accessible by plane. The creek, where the station is located, drains a 152-square-kilometer area of boreal forested peatland. Due to the permafrost in the region, significant thawing has transformed parts of the landscape from forested permafrost to treeless wetlands. In October 2022, the station suffered massive damage from an extraordinary late-season wildfire that raged for nearly 100 days before finally reaching the camp. The research station had just reopened during our stay there. This is good news for the entire scientific community, given the importance of this unique site in the heart of the boreal forest.
The goal of our Scotty Creek campaign was to sample the effects of fires on peatland ecosystems, aiming to better understand the climate change implications of wildfire in this fire-sensitive landscape. We spent three days in the field, sampling key ecosystems from sunrise until sunset.
A special shoutout goes to the station crew, whose professionalism made everything run smoothly. After long days of work, returning to camp was a treat, especially with our hosts preparing dinner for us. We’ll never forget their hospitality—thank you, Scotty Creek team!
And so, our journey comes to an end. It was a summer to remember, one filled with hard work but also moments of joy and discovery. People will read this post, and in the near future, others will study the findings of our field research. Our results may be cited and applied by fellow scientists. Yet, no data or paper can truly capture what this season of fieldwork was like. Only we hold those memories. The months of preparation that preceded the trip: developing research protocols, selecting sites, navigating logistics, and endless paperwork. The long hours driving both paved and dirt roads. Fieldwork under the scorching sun, and other days when cold rain chilled us to the bone. The relentless mosquitoes. Simple lunches in the field contrasted with the risotto made from mushrooms foraged at burned sites. The flat tire. The cracked car window. Lost pens. Inventorying more than 400 trees in a single plot. Charcoal covering our hands and faces day after day. Setting up camp in incredible, remote places. The joy of plunging into a cold lake after a hard day of work. Spontaneously stopping the car on our day off because the excitement of sampling two more sites was too hard to resist. Unexpectedly gaining four extra days in Greenland due to a canceled flight. Swimming in the frigid waters of a fjord. Climbing to the summit of a mountain.
We have had the privilege of visiting places most people will never see, and for that, we are deeply grateful. This chapter of fieldwork for our Ph.D. research is over, but the Arctic continues to warm, and intense fire seasons in these regions are here to stay. We are eager to better understand the complex interactions between these changes and Arctic-boreal fires. As we return home, our suitcases packed with data, the time for analyses begins—now from our offices, but with this field season always on our minds.
The NWT fires expedition was organized within the Research Council of Finland Academy Research Fellow project “Fire in the Arctic,” led by Meri Ruppel, and the Kone Foundation project FLARE. The fieldwork was also part of FireIce (Fire in the land of ice: climatic drivers & feedbacks), a Consolidator project led by Sander Veraverbeke and funded by the European Research Council. FireIce is affiliated with NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).
This blog post was co-written by Lucas R. Diaz, a Ph.D. student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Sonja Granqvist, a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki, both studying Arctic-boreal fires.
A combined team from the University of Helsinki (Environmental Change Research Unit), the Finnish Meteorological Institute (Atmospheric Composition Unit), and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Climate & Ecosystems Change) was on its way again to gather groundbreaking data on carbon and aerosol emissions from increasing fires in the northern high latitudes. Our journey began in boreal Quebec and now continues to Arctic Greenland.
Climate change is warming the Arctic with partly unexpected consequences. In recent years, unprecedented wildfires have raged through Arctic permafrost terrain burning in 2019 and 2020 alone, an area equal to half of what burned in the previous 40 years. In Greenland, a land known for its icy expanse, fires are rare. However, in July and August 2019, the second-largest wildfire recorded on the island occurred at the Kangerluarsuk Tulleq, northeast of Sisimiut. To our knowledge, fire effects in Greenland have never been studied—until now, as we begin our investigation.
To estimate the carbon burned and greenhouse gases and aerosols released during tundra fires, we assess post-fire ecosystem effects. We measure the dominant ecosystem types within the fire scar and compare them with unburned areas. We evaluate fire severity, and we conduct various aboveground and belowground measurements to calculate and date carbon stores.
Our campaign aimed to efficiently use 29 hours at the destination by collecting samples from all major ecosystems within the fire scar. We arrived by boat (hiking from Sisimiut is also possible but would take 2 days) and spent the day sampling. We camped near the shore, with some of us taking a daring dip in the sea. We continued sampling the next day before returning to Sisimiut in the evening. The study area exemplified the Arctic steppe ecoregion, featuring fragmented ecosystems ranging from barren rocky slopes and drier fields dominated by moss and lichen to moderately wet peatlands. We successfully collected a diverse set of samples from various ecosystems for detailed lab experiments and analysis to be performed back in Finland.
As we were preparing to head home from Greenland, we encountered unexpected foggy weather, which led to flight cancellations for several days. This gave us a well-appreciated few extra days of adventure. Three of us packed our hiking gear and embarked on an overnight hike. The summit of the two mountains we climbed was unforgettable. A key lesson for traveling in Greenland: keep your schedule flexible—it’s worth it!
Overall, the field campaign was a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience. But that’s not all—can you guess where the fiery journey of Granqvist and Diaz will take them next? Stay tuned!
The Greenland fire expedition was organized within the Research Council of Finland Academy Research Fellow project “Fire in the Arctic,” led by Meri Ruppel, and the Kone Foundation project FLARE. The fieldwork was also part of FireIce (Fire in the land of ice: climatic drivers & feedbacks), a Consolidator project funded by the European Research Council. FireIce is affiliated with NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). This blog post was written by Sonja Granqvist, a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki, studying Arctic-boreal fires in collaboration with the Climate & Ecosystems Change research group from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
This blog post is the first in a series to come. Our team, the Climate & Ecosystems Change research group from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is working in collaboration with the Environmental Change Research Unit from the University of Helsinki for a summer with lots of fire field work, science, and adventure. On this journey, our first stop was the Quebec province in Canada. I’m writing this post after our last day of fieldwork here.
The 2023 wildfire season was the largest on record in Canada, with more than double the burned area as the second largest year. In Quebec, an estimated 4.5 million hectares were burned, an area slightly larger than the size of the Netherlands. This record-breaking fire season in Quebec was due to extreme warm and dry conditions. The dense smoke plumes from the 2023 Quebec blazes shocked the world when the smoke reached several cities on the US East Coast, including New York City.
Fellow scientists have been digging deep to understand and explain the phenomena involved in this Quebec fire season. However, as far as we know, estimates of carbon combustion, or the amount of carbon per area burned that is released during a fire, have never been made in Quebec. That’s why we are on it! In loco, since field measurements are a prime way to quantify carbon emissions from fires.
We assess post-fire ecosystem effects to calculate carbon pools below and above ground. In other words, this is the carbon stored in the soil and vegetation. After collecting soil samples and inventorying the vegetation, we can compare burned and unburned (control) locations to estimate how much of this carbon was emitted to the atmosphere due to fire. We do this comparison based on what is called the adventitious root method. On black spruce trees, adventitious roots grow above the initial root collar into the upper soil layers and provide a reference for the pre-fire soil height, as they remain clearly visible many years after fire.
During our expedition, we covered more than 4,000 kilometers on the road. We started by traveling north from Montreal along the James Bay Road and began our sampling at two fires near the locality of Radisson, where the remote Trans-Taiga road was our daily route. We then headed to Waskaganish, on the southeast shore of James Bay, where we sampled another fire. Finally, we ended our campaign at a large fire in the commercial forest near the town of Lebel-sur-Quévillon. All these trips allowed us to make a scientifically interesting transect from North to South in the Quebec province. We also got to know some incredible places, and we are grateful to the people living there who welcomed us.
We were able to observe two different types of intermixed ecosystems in the fires we visited. We found forests dominated by black spruce in peaty lowlands. In drier and often rocky uplands, Jack pine trees dominated. I’m curious to see how these differences will be reflected in practice when we analyze the carbon combustion in these systems.
Our team in the campaign was Lucas Diaz, Max van Gerrevink, Thomas Janssen, Yuquan Qu, and Sander Veraverbeke from VU Amsterdam, and Sonja Granqvist from the University of Helsinki. The success of this expedition is also thanks to our collaborators here in Quebec who helped us during our preparation: Dominique Arseneault (Université du Québec à Rimouski), Jonathan Boucher and Yan Boulanger (Canadian Forest Service), and Fabio Gennaretti (Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue).
This fieldwork is part of my PhD project, so I was responsible for leading and organizing the entire expedition. As hard as it was, the whole process was also a lot of fun. Several times during the campaign, I felt like I was on a holiday road trip with a group of friends. In the end, that’s not entirely wrong. This kind of experience brings us closer to people. It strengthens existing bonds and creates new ones. This great adventure gave me moments that I will remember forever.
Time passes quickly here in the boreal forest. Soon, it will be time to pack our bags and embark on the next stage of this fiery journey. Curious about the destination? Stay tuned!
The Quebec fires expedition is part of FireIce (Fire in the land of ice: climatic drivers & feedbacks). FireIce is a Consolidator project funded by the European Research Council. FireIce is affiliated with NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). This blog post was written by Lucas Ribeiro Diaz, a Ph.D. student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, studying Arctic-boreal fires by combining field and remote sensing approaches.
