Let’s start the 2024 edition with a poster from Mariane St-Aubin, student at Université de Montréal and supervised by Marc Amyot and Jean-François Lapierre.
Title : Following the current of an electrifying river in subarctic region
Summary of the research project :
The first run-of-river plant (ROR) built in Nunavik will enegize the inuit community of Inukjuak in 2024. While small, theses buildings were recently linked to the change in mercury cycle and to the bioaccumulation of methyl-mercury in the food networks, some impacts that could be linked to multiple disturbances in the watershed. The ROR plant of Innavik Hydro rests on the permafrost and is thought to be the largest Hg tank. Impoundment could increase melting and the ancient carbon and Hg flux towards the river. A multidisciplinary team combining geomorphology, biogeochemistry, limnology, ecotoxicology and genomics follows closely the impoundments of the plant, to enlighten for the first time how ROR can influence the fluxes and transformations of carbon and mercury in a septennial context. An essential part of the project is to share the objectives and research results with the hosting community, which whom we hope to promote bilateral knowledge transfer. This poster was prepared for a sampling workshop on the filed with students of Uquutaq High School, in October 2023.