Fieldwork for this project took place through summers 2018 and 2019, visiting sites in the MacKay Lake and Daring-Yamba lakes area to sample shrubs for the growth ring component of this project. Trees were sampled opportunistically from the study areas. New in 2019, we also sampled vegetation at several plots to investigate how vegetation communities […]
We brought lots of food along on our trip, but we also had many long hard days. Adding some fresh berries or fish to a meal was always a welcome addition to our dehydrated food, adding extra flavour and much-needed calories.
As we canoed toward an esker on the east end of Jolly Lake, we noticed a Twin Otter fly over and land near our desination. Strange… And then there was another. As we got closer to shore we could see people moving around and a large tent set up. After no sign of civilization for […]
We first camped where the Twin Otter dropped us off, and stayed there for a while. There were many close research sites and our work was slow at first as we were figuring out efficient ways to complete our research. The first time we moved camp, we canoed from the west end of Jolly lake […]
We didn’t get to pick where we wanted to hike to each day. Our research sites were determined by satellite maps of greening or non-greening areas (explained on the satellite page). Sometimes getting to these sites was challenging. There were wetlands, rocks, streams, and hummocky terrain, and birch and willow thickets that we would hike over […]
One of the things we were interested in was the growth patterns of shrubs in the Bathurst Caribou herd range. Specifically, we wanted to know how climate has affected shrub growth. We have already looked at the greening patterns in the satellite data, but the shrubs themselves have a story to tell us. At each […]
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Tree dendrochronology was pioneered in the early 1930’s by A.E. Douglass, who then founded the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Since that time, tree rings have been used in archaeology, chemistry, ecology, and biogeography to reconstruct the timing of past events. Growth rings in trees […]
The Government of the Northwest Territories censused the Bathurst herd in summer 2018, and the results are alarming: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/caribou-herds-decline-2018-1.4913934. From a half a million caribou when the population last peaked in 1986, the herd now stands at 8,200 individuals, a decline of 99.9%.
This is our first camp on the west end of Jolly Lake. Although we didn’t have twenty-four hour sunlight at this latitude, it didn’t get really dark until closer to the end of the trip. This photo was taken at 10pm.
We’ve been back for almost two months now, and data entry is underway! For my personal project, I am looking at seedling dynamics at northern treeline. More specifically, I’m looking at what makes a certain spot more favourable for a seedling to grow compared with where seedlings are not growing. While the team was up […]
