Tracking environmental change in the Gwich'in settlement area: Enhancing community-driven monitoring of lakes and rivers

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Project Background

This project supported community-based monitoring of aquatic habitats in the Gwich'in Settlement Area, an area facing challenges such as climate change, permafrost thaw, and pollution, all of which have significant impacts on water quality. To address these critical issues, community-based monitoring is needed to continuously collect data used to identify trends, assess impacts, and predict future changes.

Research has shown that communities and organizations with a permanent presence and investment in the territory are more likely to be successful in long-term monitoring compared to external groups. To facilitate community-based monitoring, Laurier researchers engaged with local communities to understand their concerns, provided both remote and in-person training on water quality monitoring, and supported community-based water quality monitors in gathering data from their chosen locations.

Outcomes

The research team assessed the successes and challenges of the community-based monitoring program to provide recommendations for future programs. They found that:

• Interest from the recruited community members was initially high with eight trained monitors completing 100% of their allotted training time.

• Monitors collected data from eight different water bodies of local interest. This included standard measurements, such as pH, temperature, and conductivity, as well as surveys of aquatic insects that are sensitive to water quality.

• Monitors collectively completed 58% of their independent monitoring opportunities.

Impacts

The research team believed their project reinforces the idea that communities are interested in conducting water quality monitoring. However, the long-term monitoring initiatives face challenges due to:

• Difficulties in communicating with community members from outside the territory.
• The short-term nature of the employment opportunities provided by the project.

The researchers had hoped to engage community members in an ongoing monitoring initiative, but the collection of only 58% of the planned data suggests that further efforts are required. To ensure consistent data collection for water quality monitoring research, the project team recognize the need to:

• Spend more time in each community.
• Simplify the monitoring process by using a limited number of methods and tests.

While the project team are proud of the training and capacity building offered by this project, they believe their project highlights the need for efforts initiated by communities and/or programs with longer terms of funding that can allow community members to dedicate more time to monitoring.

Partners

• Gwich’in Tribal Council
• Christina Martin, Research and Data Coordinator with the Gwich’in Tribal Council

More Information

graylaboratory.ca