News

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic

Alberta’s largest water reservoir, the Bighorn Dam, is among four locations in the province most at risk of summer water shortages due to future glacier loss, according to new research from the University of British Columbia.

In a study outlined in Nature Climate Change, researchers examined how deglaciation in Alberta will affect regional water availability throughout the province. Current models predict that Western Canada will lose 70 to 90 per cent of its glacier ice volume by 2100.

In the first study of its kind, researchers analyzed patterns of streamflow in glacier-fed rivers and identified which communities rely on them for source water. Previous work in this field has often relied on computationally expensive and challenging studies of individual glaciers.

“In a very hot and dry year, there would be more glacier melt in the river, which kind of counteracts the lack of rain. But in a cool and wet summer, there would be less glacier melt, which would counteract the surplus of rain.”

By both projecting how deglaciation will affect stream flows and identifying where communities source water from, they were able to pinpoint where the largest changes to water supply are most likely to occur. Their analysis revealed that the most vulnerable areas to August shortages include the Bighorn Dam, which serves more than 1 million people and creates Abraham Lake along the North Saskatchewan River; the town of Rocky Mountain House, which is downstream of the Bighorn Dam; the hamlet of Lake Louise, part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site; and the town of Hinton.

“These places are going to see substantial changes to their water supply,” said lead author Sam Anderson, PhD candidate in the UBC department of earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences. “That will include having lower August flows on average, and a larger range of possible flows year to year. It's not that the rivers will run dry and they'll have no options, but these communities and locations will need to look for different water management strategies in the future that will help them manage the late summer period.”

To reach their conclusions, the study’s authors reviewed data on water flow for 194 rivers across Alberta and analyzed how their patterns differed. They found that, year-to-year, glacier-fed rivers had more stable water flows in the month of August, regardless of average yearly temperatures.

“Typically, by August, non-glacier fed rivers were below their yearly average in terms of how much water would flow into them, but glacier fed rivers had relatively high August flows consistently year to year,” said Anderson. “In a very hot and dry year, there would be more glacier melt in the river, which kind of counteracts the lack of rain. But in a cool and wet summer, there would be less glacier melt, which would counteract the surplus of rain.”

Anderson collected information on water sources for nearly 600 communities, and determined which relied on glacier-fed rivers. He found that, in the absence of glacier runoff, the Bighorn Dam will experience the largest decrease in average August flow, but the smallest increase of variability. The town of Hinton is projected to have the smallest change in August flow, but a large increase in variability. Average flows and variability for the hamlet of Lake Louise will be between those for Hinton and the Bighorn Dam. All will experience unprecedented numbers of days of below-average flow.

Anderson also discovered that eight communities located near glacier-fed rivers, including Jasper and Banff, will be shielded from the effects of glacier retreat, as they source their municipal water from deep underground aquifers.

“We went in with the assumption that communities in a highly glaciated area would be impacted, but it was interesting to find that that's not necessarily true. That’s why data on municipal water sources are important for understanding water resource vulnerability,” said Anderson.

Valentina Radic, co-author and associate professor in the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, says the research methods used can be applied to other regions whose municipal water supply relies on glacier-fed rivers.

“Our method is easily transferable to regions such as the European Alps, the Himalayas, New Zealand, and Patagonia,” she said. “All we need is readily available information like streamflow data, instead of the costly and difficult studies of individual glaciers that have informed previous work. The same can, and hopefully will be, done in other parts of the world, where actual data on glacier melt is often not available.”

EOAS has been awarded $800,000 by CFI to support acquisition of a new field emission electron microprobe under the project High Resolution Automated Mineralogy for Carbon Sequestration by Greg Dipple. Support for the remainder of the $2.0 Mill equipment purchase is sought through the BC KDF and through vendor support. The new instrument will replace an aging tungsten filament electron microprobe and provide unparalleled high-resolution automated chemical characterization of earth materials in support of research across EOAS and beyond.

Researchers at the Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research (UBC EOAS) use geochemical tools (trace metal and isotopic analyses) to show that some of the lead released during the April 2019 fire at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris is present in urban honey collected downwind of the fire. In the study published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters, Kate Smith and Dr. Dominique Weis collaborated with researchers in Paris, including apiarists from Beeopic, an urban beekeeping company that manages over 350 hives in Paris. Thirty-six honey samples were collected from all over Paris three months after the fire. The results of the post-fire honeys were mapped (i.e. downwind from the fire vs. elsewhere in the city) and compared to honey from pre-fire Paris and elsewhere in France. You can read full summaries of this study at UBC Science and in the New York Times.

Sibyle Moulin, a coauthor of the paper and apiarist with Beeopic, stands near beehives on the sacristy rooftop of Notre-Dame. These bees survived the fire. Photo credit: Beeopic

Dear Colleagues,

Like all of you, I have been watching events unfold across the United States and around the world, as people come together, yet again, to call out anti-black police brutality, racism, injustice and oppressive violence.  We know that these things remain deeply embedded in our societies, and we must redouble our efforts, as individuals and organizations, to dismantle them once and for all.  Anti-black racism is not unique to the US; we have our own histories in Canada to acknowledge, both in the past and currently. We must also explicitly recognize the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, which create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage.  Following on President Ono’s recent letter to the UBC community, EOAS must play an active role in moving beyond the scourge of anti-black racism, and discrimination against all people of color and Indigenous groups.  This discrimination limits opportunities for advancement among these groups and has led to systematic abuse and even murder, as the events of the past week have demonstrated so viscerally.

As we prepare to mark the 25th anniversary of EOAS in 2021, and enter into a phase of strategic planning for the upcoming external review, I am committed to working with everyone in the department, and with outside partners, to make concrete progress on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion.  Earth Science remains significantly less diverse than other fields in science, and poorly reflective of the underlying diversity of the society we serve.  Indeed, EOAS is the only department in the UBC Faculty of Science where 100% of tenure-track faculty self-identify as white / Caucasian.  We must recognize the inherent privilege many of us have enjoyed along our educational and professional trajectories, and acknowledge that many still face barriers in their own paths forward. 

Building on the outstanding work of a number of people in EOAS, we must continue to identify and eliminate obstacles to equity and inclusion, working to increase all forms of diversity in our department.  This will require a sustained and concerted effort, with a commitment from everyone to actively learn about and confront their own biases and (perhaps subconscious) complicity with institutionalized discrimination.  Several discussion groups around EDI issues are planned for the upcoming faculty retreat, and we will be working collaboratively to develop concrete action plans, drawing on various resources to guide our path forward. 

Just as we work to tackle the climate crisis, so must we act vigorously in the fight against racial discrimination and inequality.  Doing so is not only the right thing to do, but it will lead to a more vibrant and productive community, where a wide diversity of perspectives create better and more societally-relevant teaching and research.   

What can rocks tell us about the history of our landscapes and people who live on them? Rhy McMillan, who recently defended his PhD dissertation in Geological Sciences, blends geochemistry and archeology in his quest to provide Indigenous communities with scientific data that provide additional support for their oral histories.

“Ancient humans interacted with so many different parts of the world around them in many different ways, and we expect folks from one particular discipline to be able to unravel all of that from the physical remnants that they left behind?" McMillan explains. ”That's a tall task!”

Most places within British Columbia are unceded territories. The Indigenous peoples within them are working to document their continuity and use of landscapes both today and in antiquity. This includes the acquisition of resources, like raw materials to make stone tools. McMillan and his colleagues at UBC’s Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research and the Indigenous / Science Research Cluster are applying techniques from geochemistry to archeology to identify where stone was likely collected before it was shaped into belongings. By re-analyzing existing museum collections, they can build scientific data to support histories of where ancient people likely went in the past without further disturbing archeological sites.

Older approaches linking belongings to their potential origins relied on simpler geochemical techniques with limited capacity to uniquely identify rock characteristics. McMillan likens it to describing someone by hair colour alone. “That is not really enough to narrow down an individual beyond reasonable doubt.” he says. "I'm finding out where they're not from."

Instead, McMillan uses a series of techniques including spectroscopy and laser ablation for more extensive geochemical analysis that can provide multiple independent lines of evidence while minimizing damage. "It’s less about proving where a specific belonging is from so much as systematically disproving its links to all the possible quarries and resource-gathering locations until only one remains,” he says.

With this community-driven collaborative approach to provide extensive scientific analysis, McMillan is able to document the ancient movement of stone belongings. While his dissertation focused on belongings made from obsidian, he’s hopeful about expanding the approach to more geologically-ambiguous materials in the future.

References:

McMillan, R., Amini, M., Weis, D. (2019). Splitting Obsidian: Assessing a multiproxy approach for sourcing obsidian artifacts in British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 28, 102040.

Image credit: Mika McKinnon
Media Contact: Mika McKinnon media@eoas.ubc.ca

Fieldwork is renowned for its long hours and grueling pace, but working without breaks leads to exhaustion and errors. Science Teaching and Learning Fellow Alison “AJ” Jolley is investigating how students rest during field courses, and how it impacts learning.

Jolley has fond memories of her time at the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences’ Oliver Field School from her undergraduate in geology. “It made me feel really connected to the science and to geology,” she explains about the experience that gave her the confidence to pursue a career in geoscience education. “I really liked it so much, I just want to make it a better kind of camp!”

She dug into how students connect with the places they do fieldwork for her doctoral research at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand under the supervision of UBC alum Ben Kennedy before returning to Vancouver to keep digging into how students’ emotional experiences, attitudes, and values impact the way they learn.

Field courses are often jammed full of learning opportunities, explains Jolley, but downtime is a hazier concept. Her current research collaboration with Alex Watson at the University of Canterbury started when field instructors grew concerned that travel days between field sites were becoming synonymous with rest. So Jolley headed to the field to observe students in camp.

“We thought that students would be tired before the rest day and energized afterwards, and it would be pretty straightforward,” she explains. “But there's a whole bunch of nuances to the way people feel about it.”

Some students took their day off to energetically socialize, investing their waking hours in getting to know other people in the camp. Others took that time off to retreat away from everyone, investing their rest period in recuperation or in connecting with their distant support network at home. But both groups returned refreshed and convinced that their efforts had paid off.

Jolley captures this split path to the same outcome as students sharing a common goal of wanting to contribute to their group and to intensively learn science, but that their way of getting there is unique. “This really speaks to us needing to give students time where they have choice to figure out what they want to do instead of prescribing activities,” explains Jolley.

It's these unexpected moments that Jolley treasures most about researching how students learn geoscience. “There's so much richness and depth to what people do and say and feel that it keeps you guessing all the time,” she says.

Image credit: Mika McKinnon
Media Contact: Mika McKinnon media@eoas.ubc.ca