A day in the life of lake hydrology

For the Wapusk Resource Conservation Team, no two days are ever the same. During the summer research season, the team may find themselves working on new projects or picking up where they left off the year before. The mix of new and old means there’s never a dull moment!

For Emily Hunt, Resource Management Technician, the best part about working for Parks Canada is spending time in Wapusk National Park doing fieldwork. There’s nothing better than projects like lake hydrology sampling to get your feet wet — not literally, thankfully — with help from some heavy-duty rubber boots.

Overflowing with data

Hydrology is the science that studies the properties and the movement of water; and in Wapusk National Park, with more than 10,000 shallow lakes, there’s a lot of water to study. Called thermokarst lakes, these bodies of water are created by the thawing of ice-rich permafrost and are the habitat for hundreds of species of plants and animals.

Since these lakes have a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, they are very sensitive to changes in the environment. Monitoring how the lakes react to changes in the environment helps inform the team on how the park as a whole might respond to climate change.

Getting the whole picture

Wapusk covers three different ecozones: boreal forest, peat plateau and coastal fen, each with their own unique characteristics that will react differently to changes in the environment. To get the best picture without sampling all 10,000 lakes, the team collects water samples from 16 lakes spread across all three ecozones.

Samples are taken from the lakes three times a year: shortly after the ice melts in June, during the peak summer heat in July and again in September, shortly before the ice freezes. The samples are then sent to our lab colleagues to be analysed, which gives us information about the composition of the lakes in different seasons. This project has been running since 2010, so we have a great picture of the lakes in Wapusk.

Fieldwork fun

Like most trips into Wapusk, it all begins with a helicopter ride where Emily and the pilot will use satellite imagery to determine which of the many lakes is the right one for sampling. After they touch down, there are four main jobs to dive into.

One person collects a water sample in a 30-millilitre bottle, rinsing it three times and then filling it to the brim and capping it under water. This gives them the best quality sample with no air bubbles or other contaminants.

The second job is taking water measurements using a YSI multimeter, which records the pH, conductivity, temperature of the water, air temperature, and finally, a depth measurement at the spot the sample was collected.

Team member three is the scribe, making note of all the measurements, weather conditions, shoreline erosion, any flooding or drying up, aquatic and terrestrial vegetation, the colour, clarity, and sediment of the pond, and any evidence of geese or other wildlife.

The fourth and final team member is the polar bear guard, watching to make sure the rest of the team is safe while they’re knee-deep in research.

Rinse and repeat

This whole process takes about four minutes, then they’re back in the helicopter and off to the next lake. The team repeats this at all 16 ponds, making sure the process is the same every time. After a long day at the lake, they head back to Churchill, put the samples in the fridge, and head home for to prepare for their next day in the field.

Of course, the next day may be totally different! They may find themselves visiting a fur-trade-era trading post, solving aquatic mysteries using eDNA or corralling a gaggle of geese.

<< Peat, patience and partners: a tale of Northern fieldwork || Wildfire, a force of nature's regeneration in Wapusk >>

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