CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT
During the summer of 2014, the southern Northwest Territories (NWT) experienced an unprecedented fire season, with a burn fingerprint that spread across two ecoregions (the Taiga Plains and Taiga Shield), and a landscape that is underlain by mosaic of permafrost coverage, vegetation type, and previo...
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ftdatacite:10.25976/487w-f297 2023-05-15T17:46:42+02:00 CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT Government of the Northwest Territories 2019 csv https://dx.doi.org/10.25976/487w-f297 https://datastream.org/dataset/395ed260-0ea9-44e7-ade1-cec5debbb124 en eng DataStream dataset Dataset 2019 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.25976/487w-f297 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z During the summer of 2014, the southern Northwest Territories (NWT) experienced an unprecedented fire season, with a burn fingerprint that spread across two ecoregions (the Taiga Plains and Taiga Shield), and a landscape that is underlain by mosaic of permafrost coverage, vegetation type, and previous fire history. Our study was conducted across the Dehcho, Wek’èezhii, and Akaitcho Geographic Regions, which encompass the most significantly burned areas from the 2014 fire season. Within these regions, we examined water quality across a series of 50 catchments that varied based on within-catchment fire extent, ecoregion (Taiga Plains vs. Taiga Shield), and within-catchment characteristics such as wetland extent. This sampling scheme – which covers as significant a range of landscape variability as possible – is allowing us to tease apart the effects of wildfire from other landscape variables that cumulatively impact aquatic ecosystem health. We find that the effects of wildfire on stream water chemistry are relatively weak when measured at stream outlets, but that these effects can teased apart from other, key landscape attributes with the use of multivariate analyses and a large sample size. However, we do find transient changes in water quality immediately post-fire, and changes in pore water chemistry and hydrologic parameters within catchments affected by wildfire. Future work should examine long term fire-induced changes within catchments, and focus on determining the effect of wildfire during years that are relatively wet. : : Dataset Northwest Territories permafrost taiga Taiga plains Taiga shield DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Northwest Territories |
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Open Polar |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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ftdatacite |
language |
English |
description |
During the summer of 2014, the southern Northwest Territories (NWT) experienced an unprecedented fire season, with a burn fingerprint that spread across two ecoregions (the Taiga Plains and Taiga Shield), and a landscape that is underlain by mosaic of permafrost coverage, vegetation type, and previous fire history. Our study was conducted across the Dehcho, Wek’èezhii, and Akaitcho Geographic Regions, which encompass the most significantly burned areas from the 2014 fire season. Within these regions, we examined water quality across a series of 50 catchments that varied based on within-catchment fire extent, ecoregion (Taiga Plains vs. Taiga Shield), and within-catchment characteristics such as wetland extent. This sampling scheme – which covers as significant a range of landscape variability as possible – is allowing us to tease apart the effects of wildfire from other landscape variables that cumulatively impact aquatic ecosystem health. We find that the effects of wildfire on stream water chemistry are relatively weak when measured at stream outlets, but that these effects can teased apart from other, key landscape attributes with the use of multivariate analyses and a large sample size. However, we do find transient changes in water quality immediately post-fire, and changes in pore water chemistry and hydrologic parameters within catchments affected by wildfire. Future work should examine long term fire-induced changes within catchments, and focus on determining the effect of wildfire during years that are relatively wet. : : |
format |
Dataset |
author |
Government of the Northwest Territories |
spellingShingle |
Government of the Northwest Territories CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
author_facet |
Government of the Northwest Territories |
author_sort |
Government of the Northwest Territories |
title |
CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
title_short |
CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
title_full |
CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
title_fullStr |
CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
title_full_unstemmed |
CIMP 180_ The impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the NWT |
title_sort |
cimp 180_ the impact of wildfire on diverse aquatic ecosystems of the nwt |
publisher |
DataStream |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.25976/487w-f297 https://datastream.org/dataset/395ed260-0ea9-44e7-ade1-cec5debbb124 |
geographic |
Northwest Territories |
geographic_facet |
Northwest Territories |
genre |
Northwest Territories permafrost taiga Taiga plains Taiga shield |
genre_facet |
Northwest Territories permafrost taiga Taiga plains Taiga shield |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.25976/487w-f297 |
_version_ |
1766150508666421248 |