Paleoclimatological assessment of the central Northwest Territories: implications for the long-term viability of the Tibbett to Contwoyto winter ice road

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The proposed research falls within the Strategic Project Grants target area of Healthy Environment and Ecosystems (Ecosystem Adaptation, Interventions and Modeling). We will provide a detailed assessment of the impact of climate change, as archived in Late Holocene (last ~3500 years) lake sediments, and tree ring records spanning the last 200 years, to provide information valuable for current and future management of the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road (TCWR). The TCWR is the world's longest heavy haul ice road (586 km) extending from Yellowknife, NT into southern NU. The TCWR is critical to the economy of the NT with more than $500 million per year in goods passing north to service mines along the route. As 87% of the TCWR is built over lakes, any change in ice stability, thickness, and duration of cover associated with climate variability impacts use of the road. For example, the unusually mild and stormy El Niño influenced, winter of 2006 shortened winter road operations to 26 days below average, resulting in only 6,841 loads going north. As a consequence there were substantial industry losses (e.g. mothballing of the Tahera Diamond Jericho Diamond Project has been linked to the prohibitive cost of flying in fuel). With a projected growth in truck traffic to 14,000 loads north by 2013 it is critical that policy makers, planners, and mine developers have reasonable data upon which to base economic forecasts, as alternate transportation costs (e.g. air transport) are prohibitively high. In our multi-disciplinary research on a series of cores collected along the length of the TCWR we will provide high-resolution information on climate variability and its affects on aquatic and terrestrial environments in the central NT. Our methodology will permit us to recognize cycles and trends that have impacted climate change. Through use of time series analyses we will predict possible future trends in climate and ice cover. This information may be used by stakeholders (e.g., industry, government, non-government organizations, and First Nations groups) to strategically manage northern ecosystems and to inform policy makers and planners of potential climate conditions that may prevail in the coming decades.