Life Support
This science and art collaboration between artist Rhian Brynjolson and water expert Jennifer Baltzer focuses on the idea of life support, making connections between self-preservation and the health of global systems, with a focus on subarctic regions; on the effects of permafrost thaw, in particular abrupt thaw events, and the resulting changes, structure and function of subarctic ecosystems.
Acrylic paint on canvas, 41x51cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Plot Grid: Collapsed Scar Bog
“When I look at scientific data on the effects of permafrost thaw on boreal forest, I sometimes have trouble picturing what it looks like. This painting started by looking at a plot map of trees that were painstakingly identified and recorded by researchers on a grid, and then checked 5 years later. Imagine living in a remote camp and tagging and checking on 40,000 individual trees in a mosquito-infested forest! The holes represent trees that were lost to permafrost thaw, as the ground under them thawed and collapsed into bog.” - Rhian Brynjolson
Plot Map from Northern Water Futures Friday Features video interview with Dr. Katherine Dearborn.
Acrylic paint on canvas, 41x51cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Holes
Scientists work in the north, mapping trees, to see how forests are changing over time. Researcher Katherine Dearborn was shocked by the changes she saw.
“Because permafrost in the area is thawing so rapidly, I found that a lot of trees growing at the edge of permafrost areas had died and fallen over into the surrounding wetlands. In fact, sometimes I found myself looking at my map of the plot and thinking there should be a tree here, when there was just the wetlands. One time I even reached into the peatmoss where a tree should’ve been and found it had been completely buried in the last five years. So, the rate at which these changes were happening was really shocking to me. Especially when I think about what it might mean for the different species of wildlife that live in the boreal forest. And the people who rely on those species of wildlife for food.” - from a Northern Water Futures video interview with Katherine Dearborn, about trees that she studied in the Northwest Territories
Acrylic paint on canvas, 41x51cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Life Support
In our busy lives, it’s easy to lose track of some basic facts. One is that plants keep us alive.
“My job is to be the voice of plants and (communicate) how climate change influences them. What people may not understand is that plants are an essential part of our ecosystem, and they provide key services that we, as people, require. They use the carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere and produce the oxygen we breathe.” - from a Northern Water Futures video interview with Katherine Standen
Our health depends directly on the health of our forests. In Japan, there is even a movement towards “Forest Bathing” - spending contemplative time in natural settings - as a practice that enhances both mental and physical health.
Acrylic paint on canvas, 41x51cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Study After a Fire 1
After a fire, researchers track the regrowth of plants, young trees, and fungi, and what plants might be available to wildlife. The animals that eat those plants are an important food source in remote areas, where transportation costs make groceries more expensive, and harvesting of local animals is a culturally important activity. A rapidly warming Arctic climate could affect food security in the North, if fire activity continues to increase.
“Plants in the boreal forest are amazingly resilient to fire through biological adaptations, but destruction on this scale could change all that.” - from a Northern Water Futures video interview with Nicola Day
Acrylic paint on canvas, 41x51cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Study After a Fire 2
The North is heating up! “Canada’s north is among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth”, says Global Water Futures scientist, Dr. Jennifer Baltzer. Which seems unfair, since the cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels outside the region. A warmer climate means more fires.
“Fires have always burned in the northern forest and the system is adapted to them. However, climate change is causing fires to burn larger, hotter, and more often.” - from a Northern Water Futures video interview with Alexis Jorgensen
Fires also burn peatmoss, and blacken the ground, causing permafrost to thaw more quickly. As permafrost thaws, it can release contaminants like mercury into the water, threatening fish and other aquatic life. As the carbon-rich material released by thawing permafrost begins to decompose, methane and carbon dioxide are released in enormous amounts. So, in a vicious feedback loop, thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and accelerate global climate change.
Graphite and coloured pencil on paper, 41x51 cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Drunken Trees
As permafrost thaws, the ground sinks and becomes boggy. Trees begin to tilt, then topple over. Forests become lowland bogs. As water runs off, lakes can dry up, or waterways may become connected and collect in a new basin. Sometimes ground slumps and riverbanks collapse, and rivers can even become blocked. This is called a thermokarst event and can release sediments and mud flows, turning clean water into cowboy coffee.
“Permafrost thaw can affect the resilience of the whole boreal system and how water moves through it.” - Dr. Jennifer Baltzer
Changes to northern waterways have an enormous impact on people, because they are used for hydropower, drinking water, fishing, and transportation.
Acrylic on canvas, 41 x 51 cm
Rhian Brynjolson
Figure Three, Ordination Plot
As permafrost thaws, the higher plateaus where black spruce grow begin to collapse into boggy wetlands. The landscape in the north is undergoing a dramatic shift. It’s worth reflecting on what is being lost in terms of biodiversity in the boreal forest. We are conditioned to think about forests in terms of resource or recreational use. But we should pause and also appreciate that there is inherent beauty in those boreal systems that support an intricate, mystifying diversity of plants and creatures and fungi. If we lose biodiversity, we also lose beauty and complexity.
This image is from a research paper titled, “Permafrost thaw is rapidly altering forest community composition” by Dearborn et al. (2020).
Northern Water Futures
Government and industry decision makers, and local and Indigenous communities and co-management boards urgently require science-based predictive tools and user-driven mitigation and adaptation strategies. In direct response to these water security challenges, Global Water Futures is supporting Northern Water Futures (NWF), a Northwest Territories (NWT)-focused consortium of knowledge producers, mobilizers and users from university, communities, government, industry and non-governmental organizations. NWF works collaboratively to improve the understanding of, and ability to predict and mitigate, the impacts of climate change and industrial expansion on the NWT shared water resources.
Find out more about Northern Water Futures.
You can view the Northern Water Futures Friday Features videos that inspired some of these artworks here.
Permafrost Thaw, Wildfire, and Landcover Change
Boreal forests occupy latitudes that are warming 2-3 times faster than the global average. Rapid warming is having marked impacts on high latitude disturbance regimes: wildfires are more widespread, severe, and frequent; permafrost thaw is disrupting the physical foundation of northern ecosystems; species ranges are shifting in response to warming, altering biotic interactions. Indeed, widespread land cover change is evident throughout the boreal biome. In the north, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are tightly coupled. Aquatic ecosystem health is impacted both by the impact of the disturbances through changes in the quality and quantity of the runoff as well as through longer term, sustained changes associated with disturbance-induced landcover change. Understanding these disturbances and their impacts on landcover is critical given impacts on ecosystem productivity, the quantity and quality of runoff entering vital aquatic ecosystems, and the nature of land surface – atmosphere interactions with feedbacks to regional and global warming.
Why We Should Care
In the north, permafrost forms the foundation (i.e., life support) for the flora and fauna that inhabit this region and dictates the way water moves around the landscape and, as such, how it interacts with the soil and vegetation. Consequently, changes in this foundation can profoundly alter the structure and functioning of the northern ecosystems with global consequences. Similarly, increasingly frequent, larger, and hotter wildfires are causing rapid changes in landcover. Repeated wildfire in boreal forests gives advantage to species that regenerate more quickly, such as poplar, aspen, and pine, or in some cases prevents forest regeneration from occurring. From a global perspective, the soils of the north are incredibly carbon rich and as permafrost thaws or soils are combusted during fire, this organic matter can be released as carbon dioxide and methane on a massive scale. Soil carbon released through these processes acts as a positive feedback to global warming, impacting our climate system; as such “what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic”, a message that needs to gain broader recognition in the general public.
Although permafrost thaw and wildfire both directly affect the terrestrial environment, these disturbances and associated landcover change alter hydrologic function and impact downstream aquatic ecosystems. Frozen soils have long locked away carbon, nutrients, and various potential toxins and their combustion or thaw can release these compounds into the associated waterways. For example, where abrupt thaw leads to slope failure, the downslope streams and rivers may be blocked completely altering flowpaths or have excessive sediment loads leading to turbid, inhospitable environments. In other places, thaw is leading to increased methylation of mercury and contamination of the fish upon which Northern communities rely, impacting the health and well-being of these communities. Fire can accelerate these thaw processes. More broadly, because of the biome-wide scale at which these changes are occurring, these terrestrial-aquatic linkages are far-reaching - even affecting inputs to the Arctic Ocean.
Behind the Exhibit: Life Support
“Our collaboration on this project has, out of necessity, been through electronic media. Through phone calls, emails, communication apps, and video conferencing, we’ve - somehow - found our way to speaking each other’s languages. Biology and forest ecology require a vast knowledge of species and ecosystems, and rely on patient measurement over time, careful data, communication skills, and mathematical analysis. Visual art requires creating a compositional structure, synthesis of ideas, metaphorical connection, and messy paints. The common ground we found was a passion for the boreal forest and its lakes, rivers, and streams. I’m in awe of the fieldworkers, who live in camps and slog through bush in mosquito nets, and manage meticulous fact-gathering and visual charting. I worked with NWF videos, academic papers, and information gleaned through many conversations. I used a mix of sources for visual references, and used photo apps as an aid for composition and colour. I live in Whiteshell Provincial Park, and found myself seeing familiar landscapes differently - wondering about the long processes of change that have affected the forests near my home. My fascination with learning about northern ecosystems and thawing permafrost sparked a deep interest in the subject, and I’ll continue to work with the material for the forseeable future. My major regret is that travel was not possible or responsible in 2020 - I would like to meet the scientists involved in climate research, and experience the northern boreal forests.” - Rhian Brynjolson
“It was such a pleasure having the opportunity to work with Rhian to translate some of what we do and see in the North into beautiful and impactful imagery. I have been repeatedly delighted by the way our study methods and systems have been captured in this artwork and would welcome the opportunity to continue this collaboration. Visual art is such an incredible way to share these urgent issues.” - Jennifer Baltzer
Rhian Brynjolson is a visual artist, book illustrator, author, and art educator. Brynjolson wrote Teaching Art: a Complete Guide for the Classroom, and has illustrated fifteen children’s books, including three books in 2022: The Gift of the Little People and Amō’s Sapotawan, written by William Dumas and published by HighWater Press, and The Girl in the Clock, a book of poetry by Gerry Wolfram, and published by RackaTackaSacka Books. Brynjolson practices socially engaged art and collaborates with scientists and engineers from Global Water Futures, using visual art to communicate research on permafrost thaw in Canada’s North.
You can view Brynjolson’s other work at www.rhianbrynjolson.com and at www.portageandmainpress.com/Contributors/B/Brynjolson-Rhian.
Brynjolson lives and works in Treaty 3 Territory, in the boreal forest in eastern Manitoba.
Professor Jennifer Baltzer is a Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change. Dr. Baltzer is a forest ecologist whose work focuses on the drivers of the composition, structure and function of forests from the tropics to the subarctic and responses of these systems to global change. Dr. Baltzer has an extensive boreal forest field research program throughout the Northwest Territories, which focuses on the impacts of climate-driven disturbances including permafrost thaw and wildfire on subarctic ecosystems. Dr. Baltzer was recently inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
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