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Effects of climate change Weather disruptions could have major impact
on Mackenzie River Delta
Shawn Giilck
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, June 13, 2013
INUVIK
A presentation on the potential effects of climate change on the Mackenzie River Delta last week received mixed reviews from spectators.
Graduate student Brandi Newton was one of the presenters on a climate change discussion June 6 at the Aurora Research Institute. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo
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Although the presentation was advertised as a chance to hear Dr. Terry Prowse, a Nobel Prize-winning researcher in freshwater and cold region environments with Environment Canada, it was three University of Victoria graduate students working with him who spoke.
Roxanne Ahmed, Hayley Linton and Brandi Newton led the 30-minute presentation on some of the potential effects of climate change on the region.
Prime among those would be more precipitation, while the region around the headwaters of the Mackenzie River system would become drier and warmer.
The warming temperatures would also occur here, with a shortened winter season that could affect the length of time that ice roads are open, the grad students said.
Other consequences include an increase in extreme weather, shoreline erosion and boating problems.
Several speakers, including Jimmy Ruttan, said such effects were already becoming obvious.
Ruttan, a youth specialist with the Inuvik Social Justice committee, said the camps of some of the elders he works with are now flooding when they used to be more than 40 feet from the shoreline and more than 20 feet above it.
He also said some of the long-navigable channels in the delta well-known to people in the region are now shifting unpredictably.
The students expressed considerable interest in that, making a note that boating navigation was likely to be a major effect of climate change.
Dave Kaufman said some of their predictions, such as increased precipitation, were already noticeable.
"We're getting a lot more rain than in past years," he said.
However, Mary Olin, another spectator, expressed some puzzlement at the discussion. She said that such changes aren't out of the ordinary for rivers, especially a delta such as the mouth of the Mackenzie River.
"Is this not normal for a river?" she asked without receiving a detailed response.
Afterward, Olin said she didn't find the presentation compelling.
"This wasn't leading-edge research, it was someone looking to work on a thesis," she said with some disappointment.
John Moore said he was quite impressed with the talk. He said the women "really knew what they were talking about."
Another spectator, David Bob, questioned the presentation in some detail. He told Inuvik Drum he had done some similar research 10 years ago that was controversial at the time but was now better accepted.
"It was very basic and uninformative for me," he said. "It is fine to say water levels will rise and fall in certain areas but you have to look at topography, serial stages within the terrestrial ecosystem, slopes, aspects, etc., to understand what they are stating but I am not sure if they look that far yet. It was very difficult to ascertain from what they discussed."
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