Tim Lougheed
Three students from the Department of Geography are winners of major national awards from the Canadian Northern Studies Trust (CNST), which administers undergraduate and graduate honours on behalf of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies.
“Our students have never been so successful in a single competition,” says Professor Antoni Lewkowicz, who has been overseeing the work of M.Sc. student Megan James. She received one of seven Garfield Weston Awards worth $15,000 for her historical analysis of changes in permafrost distribution along the Alaska Highway.
Starting with a rare collection of archived surveys, which were carried out in the early 1960s, she has been assembling a database of contemporary measurements that will make it possible to compare earlier and later readings at the same sites. According to her preliminary findings, up to three-quarters of these sites no longer contain permafrost, indicating that the zone for this soil condition has been moving northward during the intervening decades.
“This is quite a significant finding and we fully expect to publish the results after Megan has finished writing up her thesis,” says Dr. Lewkowicz.
Another graduate student, Joan Bunbury, is the sole winner of a $5,000 Canadian Northern Trust Scholarship for her doctoral work on past climate changes in the southern Yukon. Working closely with members of the local community while gathering scientific information, she explored the impact of major events such as ancient volcanic eruptions that deposited significant amounts of ash in this region.
Meanwhile, Emilie Herdes, an undergraduate student originally from the Yukon, is the recipient of a $5,000 CNST Northern Resident Award for her part in a large international study of arctic glacier. This project, called Glaciodyn, is examining the movement of ice on Devon Island in Canada’s High Arctic, with a consideration of how glaciers there will respond to a warming climate.
“The interactions between sea ice conditions and glacier stability are currently poorly understood,” says Professor Luke Copland, who supervises her thesis on this subject. “So Emilie’s work will help fill in a knowledge gap during a time when we are seeing dramatic reductions in sea ice in the Arctic.”
Frontiers in Research
News of these distinctions in the Department of Geography also coincides with this year’s Frontiers in Research conference series, with its theme, “The Disappearing North.” The annual event, led by the Office of the Vice-President, Research, includes scientific poster presentations in the morning, and an afternoon screening of Diet of Souls, a film by celebrated arctic director John Houston.
The conference also includes four talks on different aspects of society and environment in Canada’s north:
The Frontiers in Research conference takes place in Room 112, Tabaret Hall, on Thursday, October 23. For more information, visit www.research.uottawa.ca/frontiers.
