It was the middle of July, 2006, and I was in a helicopter flying over the Boundary Ranges of northwestern British Columbia, Canada, headed for the Andrei Glacier. Below me stretched what looked like an untouched landscape of brilliant green, black, and white—the verdant green forests supported by the region’s rainy, overcast summer climate, the black of exposed alpine rock, and the white of many glaciers sustained by the region’s heavy winter snowfalls. We landed next to the Andrei Glacier, all six of us stunned into silence after the departure of the last noisy chopper flight. 

I was there to start a new research project—my first post-PhD project without external supervision. I planned to install weather stations at three locations to understand how air temperature and other weather variables changed with elevation around the glacier, and what that meant for glacier melt. 

The next day the chopper returned, and my field assistant and I started installing the stations. We set one up on the plateau south of the glacier (1180 m), in the same location as our camp. We then flew up to the ridge on the north side of the glacier to set up the second one (1887 m). The local weather can make for some interesting flying, and you can be stranded for a few hours or a few days if the weather gets socked in. We experienced this at the ridge station, as a snow squall blew in, making it difficult for the chopper pilot to come back for us. Luckily, after an anxious half-hour, the weather cleared up and the pilot was able to return. We then set up the third station two kilometres down-valley from the glacier terminus (585 m). 

Each station looked a bit like a robot from Star Wars, with a central steel tripod from which various instruments bristled, collecting air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall, and barometric pressure measurements. From the air temperature data at each station, I could calculate how it varied with elevation (the air temperature lapse rate), and link it to specific weather systems documented daily by the National Centres for Environmental Prediction (NCEP; 500 hPa weather maps). I could also add up the number of positive degree days (temperatures on days with positive air temperature) to determine the length and intensity of the glacier melt season. The wind data would tell me in which direction the weather systems were coming from, and the precipitation showed rainy days when melt was driven not by air temperature but by rainfall. All of these variables create a snapshot of weather conditions on the glacier at any given time, which were compared to what are considered “average” conditions that are used in models of glacier change.

This research was particularly relevant because, in 2003, the BC government had approved a run-of-the-river hydroelectric project on the Iskut River, which captures runoff from the Andrei Glacier and other glaciers in the area. My study could potentially provide information on how much river water came from glacier melt and how much water would thus be available for power generation as the glaciers retreat. 

We left the site two days after arriving, leaving the weather stations to do their work. Since my research motto had always been Mary Oliver’s quote: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work,” it was strange not to spend the summer monitoring the stations and measuring glacier parameters and watching the glacier change over the melt season. It’s what I’d been used to during my PhD, when we lived on an Arctic glacier for 8-10 weeks at a time. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the budget to stay at the Andrei Glacier site all summer nor did I have a field assistant who could help me. I was lucky that a research colleague had allowed me to piggyback on his chopper time, as I definitely couldn’t have afforded it by myself. 

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“ ‘You see all these mountains? Our minds are in every mountain. Our memories are in every valley. Our children are in every river and stream that flows here. That’s where we belong.’ ”

While I had thought the region was remote and as far as you could get from industrial development, when I returned to campus I started hearing about developments like the Eskay Creek and Galore Creek mines underway not far from the Andrei Glacier. I realized that the main reason we’d been able to chopper in and out of our research site was because the mining companies were also using the airstrip we used to fly people and machinery into their camps. In other words, this remote region wasn’t as pristine as I’d thought.

My research colleagues also told me about the Sacred Headwaters of the Tahltan First Nation. I looked them up on the map and saw that I’d been working in their ancestral lands, near the Iskut River, which feeds into one of the three rivers fed by the Sacred Headwaters—the Stikine River. The other two are the Skeena River and the Nass River. These three rivers have been rated as the top endangered rivers in the province, and this region—the landscape and its people—is documented in Wade Davis’s book, The Sacred Headwaters. 

I discovered the Golden Triangle of mining, which includes gold, silver, and copper mines in the region, and which lines up almost exactly with the Tahltan traditional territory. Mining began in the late 1800s (the Cassiar, Stikine, and Atlin gold rushes), then continued in the 1920s and 1930s (Eskay Creek mine). Mining activity had brief heydays in the 1950s-60s (Galore Creek mine) and the 1980s, but decreased significantly in the 1990s due to a drop in the price of gold and a lack of required infrastructure. However, activity increased again in the mid-2000s, when I was doing my research, as gold prices were three times higher than they were in 1999. The Golden Triangle was active again, with the reinvigoration of the Galore and Eskay Creek properties and the development of new mining properties. 

Even in the early 2000s, the Tahltan Nation supported the Eskay Creek and Galore Creek mines, as they reduced their unemployment rate from 86 percent to 6 percent and provided income to their band. But by 2004, the Tahltan were fielding requests for 41 mines in their traditional territories. According to the Sacred Headwaters, they chose to support only mines that had a reduced ecological impact and could “generate true prosperity in the region, without fundamentally compromising the social well-being of the communities or the integrity of a Tahltan homeland.” This integrity is very important. As elder Rita Louie said in Davis’s book, “You see all these mountains? Our minds are in every mountain. Our memories are in every valley. Our children are in every river and stream that flows here. That’s where we belong.” 

Most of these mines were outside of the Sacred Headwaters, with the exception of the Red Chris mine, which the Tahltan opposed vociferously but the BC government approved anyway. This mine is permitted to dump waste into a pristine lake, waste which could then make its way through a chain of headwater lakes and into the Stikine River. The Nation also opposed development by Shell Canada to extract coal bed methane, which would also centre on the Headwaters region. 

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We choppered back to the site in September of 2006, collecting each of the stations and downloading the data for analysis back in the lab. When we reached the proglacial site, we had to scare a grizzly bear away from the station, which it was in the process of ripping apart—I still have the rain gauge that was punctured by a tooth or claw. We quickly and nervously downloaded and uninstalled that station, hoping the bear didn’t come back. But the sight of that bear reminded me that, even though the region was more developed than I’d thought, it was still wild and remote enough for grizzlies to roam free and attack weather stations. 

A colleague calculated glacier decline for the Andrei Glacier since 1988 based on air photos and satellite imagery. It showed significant retreat and major thinning almost halfway up the glacier, with the greatest thinning, caused by summer melt, on the lower parts of the glacier where the air temperatures were the highest. 

My data showed that the proglacial station was mostly in its own microclimate, caused by air flowing down valley from the glacier surface. Temperatures often increased with elevation from the proglacial station because the plateau and ridge stations were outside of this cold microclimate. In the late afternoon, however, when temperatures were at their maximum, the change in temperature from the proglacial station to the ridgetop and from the plateau to the ridgetop were very similar, averaging -9°C/km. All stations had similar temperatures during warm weather associated with high pressure systems. This also happened during major low systems that brought a lot of rain. At average daily temperatures, the change in air temperature with elevation averaged -6°C/km, which is expected and is used as the standard in glacier melt modelling. However, it had a daily range of -8°C to 0°C per km. These results suggest that just using average air temperature values would fail to account for enhanced melt under specific high temperature events, or for the inversion during nighttime hours. 

In terms of positive degree days (PDDs), which are a surrogate for glacier melt, the proglacial region had the highest number of PDDs (487) and the ridge the least (115), meaning that the glacier terminus was melting much faster than the ice at higher elevations, as expected. This suggests that other glaciers in the region were seeing the same thinning and retreat as the Andrei Glacier. This melt produces water for hydropower for a brief period of time, until the glacier is small enough that it no longer contributes significantly to downstream water supplies. I was also able to identify rainfall events from the precipitation gauge data and relative humidity. It showed what we’d expect: lower air pressures result in rainfall events, in some cases fairly heavy ones, with the most rain falling on the ridge. 

While I had always planned to dig deeper into the data and link the pressure maps to specific weather events recorded by my stations, I was drowning in teaching responsibilities and didn’t have time to acquire the knowledge required to do this work.

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“In hindsight, after seeing how other researchers engage with local First Nations in their work, I should have contacted the Tahltan Nation to let them know I was working on their land”

Just this past August, the Tahltan signed the Klappan Plan with the BC government, which will give the Nation greater control over its traditional territory. It also recognizes the Sacred Headwaters by protecting them from industrial activity for at least 20 years. Coal development remains the sticking point, as the province has bought the coal license from Fortune Minerals, but Fortune has the option to repurchase their license within 10 years. Also, just this summer, a mining company has started exploration activity near the Andrei Glacier itself, noting that glacier retreat has exposed more rock for development. 

In hindsight, after seeing how other researchers engage with local First Nations in their work, I should have contacted the Tahltan Nation to let them know I was working on their land, similar to getting a permit from Parks Canada to work in a national park. For example, the Tahltan are now dealing with extensive jade and placer mining in their territory and visiting each mine to issue a cease and desist order from the Nation itself. My fieldwork was not at all ecologically invasive—three weather stations have a pretty small environmental impact. But it’s a sign of respect to let the First Nation know you’re working in their lands, unlike the placer miners who show no respect at all. 

I co-organized a workshop last fall about scientists and science writers working with Indigenous groups, and one of the key messages was to build mutual understanding and look for ways to work together on common interests. Some research groups do this already. For example, at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre on Vancouver Island’s west coast, all research projects are approved by the Huu-ay-aht First Nation if they’re going to take place on their lands. But I think this is something that researchers will incorporate into their research planning in future, to pay respect to the ancestral owners of the land on which we do our research. Who knows—there may be opportunities for mutual cooperation that we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Image credit: Andrei Glacier from camp. Photo by Sarah Boon.