Arctic lakes are a valued natural, aesthetic, and cultural resource for Indigenous communities and other northern residents who depend on them for life supporting services such as food and water. Local voices have pushed that advancing knowledge of how Arctic lake ecosystems change and affect northern nutritional resource security and human health, requires integrative approaches, with broad considerations of the predominant winter season, emotions and cultural practices associated with lakes, whole food webs, and nutritional and contaminant-related measures linking lakes and people.
This holistic research project responds to research priorities driven by Indigenous organisations that have reported fish kills under lake ice due to low oxygen, changes in fish taste and diminished access to ice-based cultural activities. We will expand the scope of traditionally summer-focused Arctic research to year-round assessments connected to impacts on socio-ecological systems in 12 circumpolar regions. Our main objectives are to better understand the consequences of warming winters on lakes, to identify adaptation strategies to ensure access to fishing sites, and to produce an improved, integrated understanding on fish health and its socioeconomic implications in the Arctic.
We will undertake detailed studies on ice cover and under ice light, temperature, flows and oxygen that directly affect survival, and the transfer of energy, health-determining essential fats, contaminants and parasites within lake food webs. These variables influence abundance and health of top predators such as Arctic char, a key circumpolar species of cultural, economic, and nutritional importance in inland fisheries. This research also aims to contribute to identifying safe ways to access other resource sites when declining lake ice leads to decreasing local fish stocks.
Our project engages Indigenous organisations, socially engaged researchers, biologists and environmental engineers in (i) instrumental interdisciplinarity where we bring knowledge systems, local observations, and science and community experts together to co-create solutions; and (ii) critical interdisciplinarity, where existing models and frameworks for conducting Arctic aquatic research are re-imagined with local participation and bolstered by intersectoral communication strategies. Through these practices, this project will lead to a co-designed resilience plan to sustain local food economies and traditional ways of fishing.
