Building a sustainable path: collaborative research

In western Nunavut lies Kugluk Territorial Park, traversed by the Coppermine River, nestled between rocky hills and tundra-covered plateaus. “Kugluk” means “white water, the place where water falls” in Inuinnaqtun¹. The Inuit fish there, find resources, and welcome tourists. Heavily impacted by permafrost degradation and deep rutting caused by the passage of tundra ice wedges, the access road to this heritage site had seriously deteriorated over recent years.

To address this issue, an Inuit-led initiative was launched: to better understand permafrost conditions in their region and build a climate-resilient access route connecting the community of Kugluktuk to Kugluk Territorial Park, while protecting the integrity of the ecosystem and tundra. The project brought together research teams, youth, elders from the community, and several partners, including the Government of Nunavut – Parks and Special Places Division and Nunavut Climate Change Secretariat – the Centre for Northern Studies (CEN), and Polar Knowledge Canada.

Michel Allard, emeritus professor in the Department of Geography at Université Laval and member of the CEN, coordinated this three-year collaborative research effort to develop a sustainable solution that meets community needs and respects the ecosystem. “It’s a great example of science contributing to a real-world issue,” he noted. To achieve this, it was essential to characterize and map permafrost conditions along the planned access route. The final design includes a summer road built on a 50 cm embankment up to the park entrance, and a floating wooden trail for all-terrain vehicles across the tundra within the park area—an original concept developed locally that deserved scientific validation.

“We used predictive modeling and numerical simulation to assess the thermal performance of the infrastructure in a warming climate,” explained Professor Allard. The team demonstrated that filling the ice wedges with soil before construction would prevent collapses beneath the access road. Modeling also revealed that the floating wooden trail laid over the tundra inside the park should maintain natural ground temperatures until the end of the century by shading the soil in summer and preventing vegetation degradation caused by all-terrain vehicle traffic.

This collaborative project fostered a true two-way exchange of knowledge, combining the experience of elders and park staff with conventional scientific approaches. “An important part of the project was introducing youth to permafrost science and technology,” said Michel Allard. Permanent monitoring sites for geomorphology and soil temperature will allow the community and research teams to track changes in the ground and infrastructure over the coming years.

^[1] https://nunavutparks.com/nunavut_parks/kugluk-territorial-park/