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How to save the coast: feds look to stabilize Beaufort shore

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The Aurora Research Institute has been given $410,000 by the federal government to examine the effects of permafrost thaw on the shores of the Beaufort Sea – and potentially find ways to stabilize the ground.

While the funding, spread over five years, was announced late last month, the institute was given a heads up and started work on the project last year, meeting with hunters and community members in Tuktoyaktuk to identify five sites worth examining in the area.

“’Thaw slumping’ occurs when the ice-rich permafrost is exposed and when it's exposed, it starts to melt,” says Erika Hille, manager of the Western Arctic Research Centre in Inuvik, which is part of Aurora College’s Aurora Research Institute.

“It's mostly during the spring and summer months, and as it starts to melt the terrain becomes unstable and the shore essentially begins to slowly collapse into the ocean.”

Hille says her team of researchers is working on a simple plan that might be able to provide structure for that slumping earth once the permafrost gives way: planting local vegetation.

Hille says they haven’t settled on which plants will work best to root into the ground and hold it together.

“We have to choose plants that will have a good chance of colonizing the thaw slumps, plants that are salt tolerant because it's going to be on the coast and the soil's going to be much more saline than you would find further inland, and plants that would be able to stabilize the soil,” says Hille.

She says there is some research suggesting thaw slumps provide environment well-suited to plant growth–sheltered from the wind in a way that most coastal environments aren’t–but there hasn’t been a lot of research done around revegetating slaw thumps in general.

“We're hoping that at the end of the project we'll be able to create a revegetation guide that would help people who do want to do these type of restoration activities in the Beaufort Sea coastal areas, and have lessons learned. What worked best, what didn't work and what’s the best route forward.”

The team will also be meeting regularly with local hunters and trappers organizations and community members.

This year, the team is looking to actually visit the sites they identified last year, collecting general imagery and data and thermal imagery with drones, as well as taking soil and water samples and collecting seeds from local vegetation.

The funding was announced as part of the federal government’s $1.5-billion Oceans Protection Plan.

In announcing the funding, NWT MP Michael McLeod said, “It’s important to focus on the health of the Arctic environment now, so that Canada can assess changes and risks, and put plans in place to protect its long-term future.”