Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (June 17/02) - Notice anything strange about the way river ice has behaved this spring? Better get used to it, says a leading expert on the effects of climate change.

"It will have a significant impact on the ice processes of northwest Canada," predicts Spyros Beltaos of the National Water Research Institute.

The Environment Canada scientist is studying what river ice breakup and jamming may be like in the next 50 or 70 years.

He says it is hard to say precisely what will happen. But it is widely accepted that the climate is warming and the rate of warming is the most dramatic in the NWT.

"That, we know, will have very significant effects on ice regimes of rivers," Beltaos says.

Those effects will be seen not just at breakup, but also during freezing and in the thickness and strength of the ice.

The scientist and his colleagues are also trying to determine how a warmer climate will change the amount and intensity of flow in the rivers.

Along with global warming, that will depend on local temperatures, snow cover and other conditions.

"That is difficult to predict," says Beltaos, who works out of Burlington, Ont.

But, he adds, "I have no doubt in my mind that it's going to happen."

Beltaos says government and industry, including hydroelectric companies, may be able to use scientific data to develop strategies to alleviate the effects of the coming changes.

Beltaos is in the midst of a four-year study of ice processes on the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta, where flooding caused by ice jams replenishes eco-systems.

"We are aware that the frequency of flooding in the lower Peace due to ice jams over the last 30 years has decreased," Bel-taos says.

His study covers a 110-kilometre area from where the Peace becomes the Slave River to just past Peace Point. No one is sure whether a reduction in the frequency of ice jams in that area is caused by decreased snow cover and other climatic reasons, or by the Bennett Dam, 1,200 kilometres upriver in British Columbia.

"This is a major question which receives a great deal of attention and some controversy," Beltaos says.

"At this point, I feel I need to do more study to have a definite opinion on that."