Transcript:
For scientists at the Scotty Creek Research Station in Canada’s Northwest Territories, climate change is not just a research topic. It’s a threat they’ve experienced firsthand.
In the fall of 2022, a late-season wildfire tore through the remote research station – destroying buildings and equipment.
Dominico: “It was pretty devastating. It was a huge setback. It’s consumed the past two years of my life, just planning, rebuilding.”
That’s Mason Dominico of Wilfrid Laurier University, who works at Scotty Creek.
He says 10 years before the fire, the station had to relocate for another climate-related reason: melting permafrost, which is the subject of his own research.
The Scotty Creek Watershed is an area historically dominated by forested plateaus that rise from low-lying wetlands on frozen ground called permafrost.
But temperatures there are rising faster than the global average. And the permafrost is thawing, which causes the plateaus to shrink and collapse.
Dominico: “I’ve been there for six years, and every year you kind of see the landscape change and, ‘Oh … this is thawing deeper. Oh, this plateau is completely gone now.’”
So for Dominico and others stationed at Scotty Creek, the signs of climate change are impossible to ignore.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
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