Who:Jules Blais, University of Ottawa, 30 Marie Curie Road, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5; Email: Jules.Blais@uottawa.ca; Phone: (613) 562-5800 Ext. 6650What:Our field collections will involve collecting lake sediment cores near bird colonies. We do this by removing a 3 inch diameter core of sediment from the bottom of a lake, typically about 3 feet in length. We then place samples in containers, and collect small samples of soil, water, and filtered particles in one liter of lake water. Our work is not invasive and has a minimal impact on the environment. We will have a maximum of 4 (four) people on site for these sample collections. We will not need to build any facilities because we will use either the Canadian High Arctic Research Station at Cambridge Bay or the Karrak Lake research station in the Ahiak Migratory Bird Sanctuary for lodging. We will use commercial aircraft to reach Cambridge Bay, and all other transport to field sites will be either by helicopter or twin otter, or by ATV for sites closer to Cambridge Bay. Why:Our objective is to show how bird populations around Cambridge Bay and the Ahiak Migratory Bird Sanctuary have changed over time using lake sediments as a natural archive. Long term, we will integrate bird population histories with recent research and indigenous knowledge to investigate the stability of migratory bird populations and their reliability as a food source in the North. Sediment is a natural archive because it slowly accumulates at the bottom of lakes and it contains animal and plant material from the time it was deposited. Thus sediment is a record of environmental changes. When birds colonize the area, they fertilize the water, and these changes are recorded in the chemical and biological composition of the lake sediment layers, which can be used to show the long term history of bird populations. We can also learn more about how bird species have changed over the past several thousand years by analyzing bird and other wildlife DNA in sediment. This study can provide new information on the stability of these populations over time and how they were affected by past changes in climate. Where:We propose to track long-term changes in several geese populations (snow geese and Ross’s geese) in the Ahiak Migratory Bird sanctuary, the Anderson Bay colony, and the Icebreaker colony. Our main base will be the Canadian High Arctic Reserch Station in Cambridge Bay. Our field sites are all within a 300 km radius of Cambridge Bay and include the Anderson Colony, the Icebreaker Colony, and the Karrak Lake Research Station in the Ahiak Migratory Bird Sanctuary. The Karrak Lake Research Station is located at the main field site at Karrak Lake (67º 14’ N, 100º 15’ W). It consists of six plywood buildings ranging in size from 8x12’ to 20x20’. When:We plan to do our field work over a 2 week period in June/July of each year under this permit. We will spend about a week at the Ahiak Migratory Bird Sanctuary (Environment Canada research base at Karrak Lake) each sumer. Our work at the Anderson Colony and Icebreaker colony will consist of day trips to each location, where we will conduct our field work for a period of 4-8 hours on site.