Publications Archives - Page 2 of 4

Summer of Smoke

Background

Ecology North worked with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, the hamlet of Kakisa, and representatives from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) to study the physical and mental health impacts of 2014’s extreme forest fire season and the related costs to the healthcare system. Climate change is creating conditions in the North and across Canada that will make extreme forest fire seasons more common. Drier winters with less snowfall, low water levels, and warmer summers with more lightning storms all contribute to an elevated risk of forest fires during the summer months.

The health risks associated with climate change are many and varied, and the concurrent costs may be more than our system can handle. With the completion of this project we hope to show that climate change is impacting the health system and all of us. The summer of 2014, and the incredible smoke that blanketed the NWT, impacted people in many ways. Vulnerable populations had their physical health impacted by the smoke, but what was most captivating about the results of this project were the emotional and stress related affects throughout the population.

Ecology North and CAPE managed this mixed-method study researching the impacts on the health system, while at the same time asking ordinary NWT residents from four communities to make videos of their experiences in the Summer of 2014. The results show the wide impact that the forest fires had on the population.

The infographic below shows a narration of the Summer of Smoke against the Yellowknife air quality records of the season.

Ecology North was also interested in how Yellowknife’s air quality during the Summer of Smoke compared to the notoriously bad air quality in Beijing, China. Check out the results below.

Summer of Smoke – Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Research Project

January 23, 2016 marked the first public showcase of preliminary results from the Summer of Smoke interdisciplinary mixed methods research project. We were incredibly lucky to have such a wealth of knowledge, experience, and initiative on the speaker’s panel. Much thanks goes out to Dr. Patrick Scott; Fred Sangris, former Chief of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation; Jessie MacKenzie, Climate Change and our Lands in Film research coordinator; Dr. Courtney Howard of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; and Dr. James Orbinski of the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

This project is made possible with funding from Health Canada.

Yellowknife Sustainable Event Checklist

Are you a event coordinator, volunteer, event sponsor, or just a concerned citizen? Learn how you can help reduce the impact of public events, and what you should be expecting from events in Yellowknife.

This Sustainable Event Guide was designed for the City of Yellowknife to help make planning an environmentally-friendly event simple and straightforward to do; just follow the simple checklist for guidance on waste reduction and diversion, energy consumption, transportation and provision of NWT water.

Use this guide for all sorts of events! Private and public events, meetings, festivals, parades, races, and public assemblies!

Click the Link below to open the guide:

Yellowknife Sustainable Event Guide

Composting in Remote Northern Camps

Waste management can be a challenge for operators at remote northern camps. Transporting waste off site is expensive and often not feasible, especially in the NWT. Methods for waste management at these sites typically involve landfilling or incineration of mixed waste.

This project was completed for Environment and Climate Change Canada with the goal of producing a guide to composting at remote sites. Diverting waste from the landfill has many benefits including:

reducing wildlife interactions,
increasing worker safety,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and
reducing environmental impact of waste management at remote sites.

This is a resource for camp managers to understand and explore the options for composting at remote worksites in Northern Canada.

Click below to open the resource:

Composting in Remote Northern Camps

Northern Soil Recipes

The Northern Soil Recipes project is a effort to find an alternative to importing soil into the NWT. Importing large quantities of soil for gardening can be expensive and inefficient. Building on the existing soil in a way that promotes soil fertility and soil life can allow us to grow food that is truly local, reducing dependencies on outside resources.

Four recipes were made to loosely work for different regions of the NWT, each starting from different base soil and available local soil additive resources. The recipes can be followed strictly or simply used as guides, many different materials can be incorporated.

The recipes can be viewed and downloaded below. Physical recipe cards can be picked up at the Ecology North office in Yellowknife, or mailed to you (for free) by contacting admin@ecologynorth.ca

The Boreal Garden:
North Slave and Sahtu

The Dehcho Garden:
Dehcho

The Great Slave Garden:
North and South Slave

The Tundra Garden:
Beaufort-Delta

For a helpful addition to the recipe cards, read our Soil Recipes booklet. In it you’ll find specific instructions for putting together healthy garden soil using local materials, no matter where you are in the NWT.

A Guide to Building Sustainable Garden Soil in the NWT

Most communities in the NWT require some amendment to their soil in order to grow productive crops. Remote communities trying to grow food in are faced with the problem of having very limited access to good quality soil. Importing large quantities of soil for gardening is an expensive and inefficient solution. Building on the existing soil in a way that promotes soil fertility and soil life can allow us to grow good food and reduce dependencies on outside resources. Some communities have even started creating soil in larger batches to share within the community. We want to encourage this, and to work toward finding easy, sustainable alternatives to importing soil into our gardens.

The information presented in Building Your Soil: A guide to building sustainable garden soil in the Northwest Territories is meant to encourage sustainable community and backyard gardening in communities of the Northwest Territories. It is meant to be a guide and a reference document, to be used along with the Soil Recipes to create garden soil from locally sourced materials.

Click below to view the guide:

Building Your Soil:
A Guide to Building Sustainable Garden Soil in the
Northwest Territories

NWT School Gardens – Curriculum for Grade 3

The information in this book is based on Growing Together at Weledeh, a highly successful gardening program that was the result of a partnership between Weledeh Catholic School, the Yellowknife Gardening Collective, and Ecology North. This book is meant to help replicate a similar experience at other schools in the NWT, and includes suggestions on adapting if some of the same components are not available.

A school garden is a powerful educational tool. Regardless of size, the real life experiences these living laboratories offer provide stronger lessons than those found in textbooks.

PLEASE NOTE: This resource was created in 2016 and is currently in the process of being updated. If you have any feedback on the current version, please send it to education@ecologynorth.ca

Click below to open and download the garden curriculum:

NWT School Gardens:
Garden Curriculum for Grade 3

Managing Hazardous Waste in Your Community

Following the successful conclusion of the Clean Start program in the Sahtu, Ecology North began working with the MACA School of Community Government and the GNWT Dept of Environment and Natural Resources to develop an instructional film intended to help NWT communities to better manage their hazardous waste.

Hazardous waste superstar Gerald Enns, along with Christine Wenman and Jeremy Flatt from Ecology North, developed a script covering the basics of dealing with a disorganized stockpile of hazardous waste and developing a community hazardous waste management plan. At just shy of forty minutes, this instructional epic leaves no stone un-turned and features interviews with municipal staff in Wekweètì reflecting on their experience of removing hazardous waste from the community as well as a comprehensive demonstration by Gerald Enns of the proper process for opening un-labelled drums and identifying the contents.

Copies of the video are available from the GNWT Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

Bottled Water in the NWT

The rapid increase in bottled water consumption has raised a number of environmental and social concerns, in Canada and abroad. These concerns largely stem from the negative environmental impacts associated with manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of single use plastic water bottles, in addition to the social issues of selling a substance that many consider a ‘public good’.

In 2016, there was no public data about bottled water consumption in the NWT. This paper is an effort to address that data gap. Two broad goals guided our research aimed at helping to fill the NWT bottled water data gap:

To gather baseline information about the amount of bottled water consumed in the NWT in 2014-2015; and,
To communicate this new information to the public in an informative and relatable way.

This report provides a brief overview of the research undertaken to achieve these goals.

Click below to read the report:

Bottled Water in the NWT:
Background Research Report on Bottled Water Consumption in the NWT

Trout Lake Water Quality Sampling 2015-2016

The 2015-2016 Trout Lake Water Quality Sampling Project emerged from the Source Water Protection Planning Project that Ecology North undertook in partnership with the Sambaa K’e Dene Band (SKDB) and Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) in 2014.

Following the completion of the plan in 2015, there were several calls for additional water quality sampling near abandoned well and waste sites in the watershed. As such, this project was developed as a first step towards implementing these calls for action. The purpose of the sampling project was to gain a better understanding of how abandoned well and waste sites may be impacting water quality in the Sambaa K’e watershed.

Sampling

The majority of sampling was done by SKDB members during the summer and fall of 2015. In total, nine samples were taken from five different sites identified as source water priorities by Sambaa K’e community members. Parameters test included pH, total BTEX (hydrocarbons), conductivity, major ions, total trade metals and total mercury. All of the results were compared to the Canadian Water Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life, which are developed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME).

Overall, the 2015 sampling results were positive. At all sites, arsenic, molybdenum, nickel, lead, selenium and zinc were below the CCME Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life. No hydrocarbons (oil and gas chemicals) were detected at these sites. There were some exceedances in cadmium, copper, iron, total mercury and silver, these sites were flagged for continued monitoring through future work.

Results Meeting

In early January 2016 Ecology North hosted a results meeting and open house in Sambaa K’e, nearly one fifth of the community attended this meeting. These results were well received and fostered substantial interest among community members for additional training and continued water sampling in the community. The insights gathered from this meeting and the sampling results collected during the project are being used to inform the development of a more formal source water protection implementation plan for Sambaa K’e. The plan will provide a more detailed list of actions, timelines and targets for source water protection activities, including our Hazardous Waste Clean Up Project.

Click below to open the sampling result summary:

2015 Water Quality Sampling Result Summary

Carbon Pricing in the NWT

Ecology North developed this discussion paper on territorial carbon pricing in February 2016, prior to the implementation of the territorial Carbon Tax in 2019.

Th people and businesses in NWT.

Click below to read the report:

Carbon Pricing for the NWT

In July of 2017, the Government of the Northwest Territories released a carbon pricing discussion paper titled Implementing Pan-Canadian Carbon Pricing in the Northwest Territories. Ecology North provided comments on this discussion paper in September of 2017

Click below to read the comments:

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