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DESTINATIONS: Permafrost melts are the same as a broken dam for our fresh water

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by John Holman

April this year saw the highest levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since human monitoring began, 410 parts per million, according to measurements made at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory.

Long blamed for warming the Earth due to anthropogenic activity, carbon dioxide is largely released as a byproduct of our modern global infrastructure in transportation, energy generation, and home heating. The thermal exchange between land and ocean is seasonally observed in our weather, so we can assume the extreme events of late, such as widespread flooding, drought, and snow fall, are linked to carbon dioxide gas build-up.

Even in 1990, when I had visited the Zongo Ice Caves in Bolivia, that particular glacier had mostly melted, that is; the ice caves were already gone. All that was left was a melting ice face. What I did see was the aqueduct that had been built to capture the glacier-melt to provide crystal clear water to the parliamentary capital of La Paz. The glacier melt posed a troubling omen, even then.

In 2016, La Paz and its indigenous neighbor, El Alto, both ran out of glacier-sourced water, prompting a crisis. The army had to begin water deliveries, public protests occurred, schools were closed, and emergency wells were dug.

This is the omen of a progressive thermal exchange originating with the melting glaciers – sucking the cold out of them to disperse as kinetic energy in high winds and gushing precipitation. The Bolivianos in the capital had lost up to 23 per cent of their fresh water source, never to be replaced.

The Wilfred Laurier University had some bracing news for the residents of Fort Simpson May 29th, last Tuesday, when it presented its findings from the Scotty Creek Research Station. They are cooperating with the Dehcho First Nations (DFN) to develop a permafrost monitoring and research program.

What they’ve discovered since Water Survey Canada began monitoring in the area in 1994 is that the permafrost is melting and migrating northward, never to return to its previous state.

The ground water that is active in our marshlands, called a talik, is normally dammed by permafrost, keeping our marshlands wet. But permafrost melts are releasing the talik, as if a freshwater dam is broken, and these are draining our lands. Our once watery marshes are now going dry, leaving behind sunken hummocks with nary a drop of water, affecting tree cover as they dry out and die.

The Wilfred Laurier University research website – www.scottycreek.com – states: “There is an urgent need on the part of provincial, territorial and federal government agencies, NGOs, Aboriginal communities and industry to understand how this land-cover change affects their shared water resources now and in the future.”

Ironically, the permafrost research camp the university set up in 1999 had to be moved in 2007, and in 2017 due to permafrost melt. This is how fast it is occurring, these changes in our lifetimes. This emphasizes the evidence of a future without water.

Not all is doom and gloom, however, as knowledge is power. The long-term plan is to set aside the research area, in cooperation with the DFN, as a Dehcho Learning Park. Already, the Dehcho Guardians, DFN-sponsored environmental monitors, have taken a week-long course in permafrost monitoring, measuring snow cover and capturing samples for chemical analysis. The Guardians, in fact, will run permafrost transects this month along Line 21, Enbridge’s petroleum pipeline replacement project underneath the Mackenzie River (the Dehcho).

We may take our glass of frosty ice water for granted now, considering our great lakes and profusion of rivers, but the permafrost melt leads to ground water drainage, which leads to increased runoff, which raises the water’s turbidity and nutrient loads.

So what is left?

We know there will be a bone dry landscape ripe for the burning, and afterwards, the blackness of a silent hill. When the smoke blots out the sun, you can be assured you’ll be a little more than parched.