Tsiigehtchic (Apr 10/06) - A few drams of the life blood of the Mackenzie River may hold the secrets to what global warming is doing to the Arctic.

It will take an investigator named Holmes to solve the case.

Earth scientist Max Holmes of the Woods Hole Research Center handles a ladle of Mackenzie River water he'll pour into a container to ship back home for study in Massachusetts, U.S. School students Chavaughn Blake, Geraldine Blake and Wyatt Jerome watch. - photo courtesy of Max Holmes

But this time he's not Sherlock Holmes the fictional detective, but Max Holmes, an earth systems scientist all the way from the eastern United States.

He visited Tsiigehtchic, March 30-31, to collect water from the Mackenzie River to see if it holds clues to what's happening to the planet.

But he needed a little help.

Fifteen students from Chief Paul Niditchie school were Holmes' assistants - junior Doctor Watsons, if you will - marching out onto river ice to take part in a three-year circumpolar experiment.

"There are scientists who are fascinated about the river that's right outside your door. (The Mackenzie) is a globally important river and it's a fascinating place for you to live," Holmes said.

"We're studying the largest rivers of the Arctic - the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers, as well as four or five of the largest rivers in Russia - that feed the Arctic Ocean."

Using an auger, the students drilled through the metre-thick ice to get the water sample which was filtered into bottles that went back to the U.S.

Now back at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Holmes will check the chemical composition of the water. Once that's established, he'll be able to take that "fingerprint" and trace Mackenzie River water in other water samples taken from around the Arctic.

"We are interested in following the fresh water from these rivers as it circulates through the Arctic Ocean and out to the Atlantic," he said.

The amount of fresh water that gets into the Arctic could affect the Atlantic Ocean Gulf Stream and weather around the world.

"We're spending a lot of time going into the schools and explain what we're doing," Holmes said.

Not only is it cheaper to recruit residents to take the samples on a regular basis as opposed to flying to the different locations every couple of months, the project hopes to bring home to people living around the Arctic world the effects of global warming on the entire planet.

"There's a web page we're setting up so hopefully students in Tsiigehtchic will have some communications with students in Alaska or Russia," the scientist said.

That interaction is important. "We have so much to learn from each other," Holmes said, who was last in Tsiigehtchic in July 2005.

"Changes in the Arctic actually impact changes on the rest of the Earth, not just the Arctic," Holmes said.