A story on the CBC radio last week caught my attention when they described one of the world’s largest cumulative log jams was found in the Canadian Arctic and could cover a third of Yellowknife.
It started to make more sense as they described the log jam located on the Mackenzie River Delta in the N.W.T. Liny Lamberink reporting for CBC news interviewed Alicia Sendrowski, a research engineer from Michigan Tech and local Roy Cockney Sr., an elder living in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T.,
With the help of satellite imagery, Sendrowski and her team studied 13,000 square kilometres of the Mackenzie River Delta where they found more than 400,000 caches of wood which added up would span a 51 square kilometre area. Most of the logs are coming from the Liard River but some were coming from the Mackenzie River itself along with the Peel and Arctic Red rivers.
Most of the logs Sendrowski’s team sampled began growing around or after 1950, but some were much older, suggesting they’d been trapped in the delta for centuries. The study describes one sample from the Peel River dated back more than a thousand years. From a climate point of view scientists have some concerns about this large accumulation of carbon but it has been very useful for the locals who have little access to wood over most of the territory. “Everywhere you go, there’s driftwood, said Roy Cockney which gives people in his community a source of heating fuel year round, and it’s sometimes used to build cabins too.”
As Sendrowski points out the Mackenzie River Delta is an area that’s going to undergo a lot of change which can influence how the carbon from these trees cycles back into the atmosphere. Climate change may break the logs down more quickly, speeding up the carbon’s release. It can also change where trees are coming from and how they reach rivers. If we have more precipitation in the area, that could lead to more trees falling and entering the river.
Sendrowski and her team also travelled to other communities in the NWT including Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic and Inuvik to study logjams as well, but they only mapped what was visible. Wood that was hidden below living vegetation or buried under ground wasn’t accounted for. This could mean that the delta’s driftwood stores could be twice as much carbon than what was calculated. There are also at least a dozen deltas bigger than 500 square kilometres around the North which could add up to a significant pool of carbon.
The article did not go into detail about what could be done with the logs apart from the fire wood and some building logs but I think some research could include producing bio fuel or soil amendment products. I have heard of the high cost of importing fuel oil into many of the small isolated communities so something produced locally may be more economical and provide local jobs.
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