The Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study (CASES) will park an icebreaker-turned-laboratory in the sea ice north of Tuktoyaktuk and study everything from the sky to the ocean floor.

Dr. Martin Fortier, research associate at Laval University and CASES scientific coordinator, said there was a need for more data on the Arctic Basin and Shelf.

A proposal from CASES was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The initial work studied sea ice in the Baffin Bay last year.

Future funding for this larger project was conditional on the group's ability to secure and over-winter a ship in the sea ice.

"One of the conditions for us to get the money was to get the ship," Fortier said. "Now we have that ship."

The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, Sir John Franklin will be retrofitted to become a floating laboratory that will house some 40 scientists and 35 other researchers working in rotation for a year.

The group sailed the Pierre Radisson into Northwest Passage into the study area last fall, from Sept. 18 to Oct. 14 to begin preliminary studies.

"Everything worked very well and now we are in the midst of planning this major endeavour," Fortier said.

Dr. David Barber from the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the faculty of the environment at the University of Manitoba, will be studying the sea ice component of the study. Barber said the change in weather is a reality in the North.

"Climate change is not something that's happening in the future, it's happening right now," Barber said. "It's very real and it's clear what's happening and we need to figure out what the consequences will be."

"This needs to be done right away, because these consequences are profound."

The study will bring together scientists from every province, 11 countries and four space agencies from around the world to study the air, land and sea.

"We have our strengths in Canada, but other countries have their strengths in other areas," Fortier said. "Bringing them all together is the only way to answer these large, global questions."

Described as Arctic systems science, the study encompasses the inter-workings of the entire environment and organisms within.

"It starts at the top of the atmosphere and goes to the bottom of the ocean," Barber said. "It starts at viruses and goes to whales and everything in between."

"It's important to deal with all the pieces, because the relationship between the pieces is very complicated."

Fortier said the area was chosen because it is a perfect example of arctic geography and also is a very under-studied area.

"It's a major continental shelf, influenced by a major river, which is representative of most of the Canadian Arctic Shelf," Fortier said. "The Mackenzie Shelf is the best representation of what's happening on a global scale in the Arctic."

The need for data is particularly strong for the shallow coastal shelf regions (30 per cent of the Arctic basin) where variability in the extent, thickness and duration of sea ice is most pronounced and where Arctic marine food webs are most vulnerable to change.

Floating school room

Grades 10 and 11 students from all three coasts will have an opportunity to study aboard the vessel through a program called Schools on Board.

"It will give them an experience in how to participate in this kind of international science," he said.

As well, the program will allow for community-based monitoring of the sea ice and the regional ecosystem.

"Communities around the ISR will be given instrumentation and they will be trained on how to use it," Barber said. "Ideally, we'd like to see members from the HTC (Hunters and Trappers Committee) get together with the school kids and teach them traditional knowledge of sea ice and snow."

The third CASES International Planning Workshop in preparation for CASES 2003-2004 will be held in Montreal Jan. 22.

Over 80 participants from six countries have already registered for the workshop.

For more on CASES, visit the following Web sites: www.giroq.ulaval.ca/cases/ and www.umanitoba.ca/ceos/projects/cases.html.