We’ve been working with the citizens of Iqaluit to assess how many and what sort of contaminants are present in their soil.  In a neighbourhood called Lower Base, some of the soil has been contaminated as a result of historical activities.  We’ve been analyzing the soil for hydrocarbons and metals.  Our initial results indicate that while the Lower Base region is contaminated, the levels of pollutants are too low to be much of a cause of concern.  This is great news as it indicates that there is likely no significant risk to human health in this heavily populated region of Nunavut.

Over the course of this winter and next summer, we will be monitoring the amount of soil that is suspended in the air and adhering to the hands of Iqaluit residents.  Using this data we can update our models of how humans are exposed to contaminated soil.

Soils are our history and our foundation. A soil profile tells us what has happened over the last 100 years and what will happen over the next 100 years. It is the legacy we leave our grandchildren. So, we must manage it. Manage it well and we can’t make any mistakes because if the soil goes wrong, no plants can grow, not animals can scamper and no birds can sing. If you don’t believe me, go to Haiti, go to the Sahara, go the middle east which used to be the World’s breadbasket but is now a desert. Why, because their soils were wrecked. So if you want to save the world, you need to save the soils first.

What will a soil’s education give you? Just this, a chance to immediately get a job. This job will be either helping protect our ecosystems from industrial damage or helping produce food. If you don’t believe me, in the 100 years since settlers came to the prairies, 50% of the organic matter and hence, the ability of soils to support human use, was lost. But beginning in the 70’s, soil scientists figured out better ways to manage the soil. As a consequence, for the last 20 years, we are no longer losing organic matter but are in fact increasing it. Thanks to soil science, our lives on the prairies is more sustainable than ever before.

As a new soil scientist, your challenge is to figure out how to make our mining, oil and gas and forestry industries sustainable. It’s not easy but nothing worthwhile is. Why should you work with me. Arctic soils are the tipping point. Can we stop run away greenhouse warming which will flood Halifax, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and all of Bangledash? There is so much carbon and nitrogen stored in Arctic soils that determining what they do will determine, are we going to tip?

Why else should you work with me? Simple really, soils form the basis of life. Our lab group tries to heal sick soils and make sure that sick soils don’t poison people.

As another integrated plan begins, it is important to ask ourselves, as an institution, why don’t we consider ourselves a northern University?  As an institution, we often spout fine rhetoric but rarely follow it with action.    I think that there are two reasons for this, our diversity as an institution and our unwillingness to identify ourselves as a northern location.

Despite our northern self-denial, our University has tremendous strength in northern affairs.  For example, the most prestigious national award for northern scholarship is called the ‘Garfield-Weston Award’ and only seven are awarded annually.  Our University graduate students received three of these awards, to Ms. Schafer, Mr. Laird, Ms. Guang.  In addition, another major award for Northern Studies was won by Ms. Brown.  Thus, in one year, our University won the greatest number of scholarships for northern studies across Canada.  Further, the University of Saskatchewan is training the only Nunavut resident in veterinary science in Canada.  These efforts in student education parallel our research strengths. Research programs across campus in fields as diverse as: political science, history, biology, Centre for Hydrology, geography, geology, toxicology, soil science, plant science and agricultural economics all speak to our northern expertise.  We have nationally recognized leaders in the fields of snow melt, northern wildlife, northern toxicology, Arctic ocean-floor ecosystems, Arctic governance, northern anthropology, soil science and climate change.  These leaders are involved in a range of projects, and in one case, are a major component of the largest International Polar Year terrestrial project Canada has ever undertaken.

Yet, as a University we don’t promote our northern students or research teams and they never occupy our homepage.  Why don’t we promote our northern success?  The first culprit that comes to mind is that upper administrators are oblivious to our northern success.  Yet, two of these administrators are prominent northern scientists in their own right (Basinger and Franklin).  So, ignorance of our success at the upper administrative levels is not the reason.  Rather the root causes likely lie elsewhere.  The first reason is that the University has a lot of strength in many areas, northern issues, being one among many.  If you look around, you see research programs across campus with important national implications.  So, despite the northern group on campus being one of the best groups in Canada, we can get lost in the crowd of national caliber groups that exist on campus.

The second reason is that the people of the University don’t identify themselves as northerners.  To me this is bizarre.  For example, where else would windchill be a routine topic of conversation, or frost bite, except in a northern location.  Yet, if you ask people from Saskatchewan if they are northerners, they will likely answer ‘No.’   This self-denial of our geographical, linguistic and culture heritage only hurts us as an institution.  Other Universities such as Laval and Alberta have managed to convince everyone that they are the northern powerhouses.  Because of this, we are shut out of the process of discussing how northern research and policies should evolve.  Currently there is a national discussion of how we should arrange the new Arctic research stations, how we should strengthen our Arctic sovereignty, how we should insure that resource use in the north is sustainable?  Yet despite our national expertise in Arctic governance, toxicology, hydrology and climate change, the University of Saskatchewan is not a major part of the debate.  We need to be.  We should be.

The Arctic is our heritage.  It can help this University more than this University can help the Arctic.  But only if we open the door to the possibility that we too, are northerners.

Arctic buildings, highways and services all are specially designed to cope with extremely cold weather as well as permafrost affected ground.  One of the key things is to prevent permafrost degradation and frost heave.  Frost heave happens in frozen soil because as water freezes in soil, it draws more unfrozen water towards it which then freezes.  This ‘ice lense’ expands and causes the soil to ‘heave’.  For many Canadians, we experience this when our house shifts during the winter. The key to preventing frost heave is that the soil needs to be porous and there should be little liquid water present.

The term ‘liquid water‘ sounds strange but it refers to water that is still in liquid phase below zero degrees centrigrade.  The majority of water will be present as ice but a small fraction, <20% is present as liquid and can still move through the soil. We term this water as liquid water to differentiate this water from the ice present in the soil or from water vapour.

Recently, our group has found that diesel spills in Antarctic soils increases the amount of liquid water present in frozen soils.  We think that the diesel is increasing the liquid water content because it is decreasing the free energy of the liquid water present in the soil.  I know that this sounds even stranger.  But when you are thinking about phase changes, you need to think about the relative energy of the two phases.  So in this case, we have the environment at a specific energy and then the liquid water at another energy.  As the environment cools, at some point it will be more energically favourable for the liquid water to be in the solid phase.  Thus, if diesel decreases the free energy of liquid water, then the environment will have to be colder to before the water undergoes phase transition to solid state (i.e. ice).

This increase in liquid water by diesel is a good news/bad news story.  The bad news is that it is possible that the presence of diesel will make certain soils more susceptible to frost heave because more water will be available to move and form ice lenses.  These ice lenses could cause frost heaving and topple existing infrastructure.  The good news is that degradation of diesel is more dependent on liquid water than temperature in Arctic soils.  Thus, diesel contamination may make it easier for microbes to eat the diesel because there is more liquid water around that microbes need to eat.

If you find this interesting, you can find the detailed technical publication of these results in an upcoming issue of Environmental Science and Technology.