Unyielding science: Overcoming challenges in the field

Work in the north can be hard. “Everything wants to kill you: the mosquitoes, the bears, the toxic fumes, the burning rocks,” jokes Steve. This photo was taken in Ingniryuat, also known as the Smoking Hills, in the Horton River valley in the Northwest Territories. The organic-rich rocks there spontaneously combust, creating plumes of hot sulphuric acid reaching over 1,000°C. The rocks also react in a similar way to acid mine drainage, forming pools of some of the most acidic and toxic brines on Earth in the otherwise pristine Arctic. “You have to be careful and well prepared to work here,” says Steve. “But the research results are fascinating.”

For Charlotte and her Canadian Forest Service team, fieldwork isn’t just about research — it’s about adapting to the unexpected. Over the years, they have faced countless logistical challenges, from wildfires and landslides to flooding and extreme weather, all affecting how they access sites. Changing conditions can impact daily operations in several ways: for example, heatwaves mean earlier start times, smoke affects productivity, and strong winds force the team to shift to newer growth stands.
The picture shows how a hurricane damaged stands of old-growth trees in Nova Scotia, making fieldwork difficult and dangerous. With every trip, planning becomes more complex in response to changing conditions. Flexibility is key, and ensuring safety and justifying the time needed for fieldwork are always important considerations.

Conducting research in wildfire-affected landscapes means constantly adapting to extreme conditions. Heat has been a major challenge for Ellen and her team. During their field campaign in the Northwest Territories, a heat dome caused temperatures to exceed 30°C in what is typically a much cooler northern location.
Ellen and her team started work as early as 4 a.m., but even in the cool of the morning, personal protective equipment such as mosquito nets, chaps, gloves and hard hats added to the heat stress. Some days, work had to be called off entirely. Mechanical equipment was also affected by the heat. Ellen has had chainsaws stop working due to vapour lock, when fuel would evaporate in the heat. With extreme weather, adapting on the fly becomes the norm, and balancing safety, productivity and evolving work conditions remains a growing challenge in the field.

Dominique is no stranger to the challenges of fieldwork in extreme conditions. This photo was taken on a sunny day, but you wouldn’t know it — the thick smoke from nearby wildfires has blocked out the sun.
Dominique’s third season of fieldwork took place during a heat dome. Dressed in protective gear and working without shade in the exposed burnt areas, the conditions made for a particularly brutal summer. Still, Dominique was able to remain positive: “The smoke kind of stops the sunlight from coming through, so that does help a bit with the heat.” With wildfires increasing in frequency and severity, fieldwork for Dominique and other researchers is only becoming more demanding.

Mark carefully walks along the edge of a massive moulin on Bologna Glacier. A striking sign of rapid glacier melt, moulins are circular holes that funnel surface meltwater into the internal drainage system of a glacier. Often up to 10 metres wide, moulins can be treacherous — especially in the winter, when a bridge of snow conceals the gaping mouth of the moulin and risks collapsing when someone skis over it.
And more than simply increasing the safety risks of research in the field, glacier melt also impacts the number of study sites that Mark and his team can visit. Helm Glacier in the Coast Mountains of southwest British Columbia, a long-term reference site since the ‘60s, has now become too small to study after decades of continuous monitoring. Mark has also noticed that sites need to be visited earlier each year, since earlier snow melt creates added challenges and safety risks. With warmer temperatures shifting research schedules, together with the rapidly changing glacier conditions, each season on the ice presents new challenges for Mark and other glaciologists.

While working in an old-growth spruce stand near the town of Peace River in northwest Alberta, Jessie experienced first-hand how shifting weather patterns are changing the way that fieldwork is done. Fifteen years ago, Jessie and her team would pull out of fieldwork when winds reached 25 kilometres — but now, lighter gusts are bringing down drought-weakened trees. Fieldwork has never been easy, but the unpredictability of it is steadily mounting. As Jessie enters the fifteenth year of her career, she wonders what future conditions will be for younger generations entering the field: “It will be interesting to see what fieldwork looks like when they are 15 years into this.”

Tiegan is finding the last few years in the field to be like a constant battle against extreme weather and natural disasters. “It feels like we’re trying to work around them,” she says.
Planning for fieldwork has become more complex. Tiegan now must implement different planning systems to work around wildfires and smoke in the field. But these new approaches come with a high burden: the weeks of monitoring required just to determine if accessing a site is possible and safe.
Other logistical matters need to be considered when Tiegan and her team are working in remote areas without cell phone service. They must arrange regular safety check-ins through satellite communication devices to ensure they receive potentially life-saving updates on new fire activity or worsening conditions. The question of personal safety for herself and her team weighs heavily on her mind when she is preparing for the field. “It’s really hard to know what an appropriate risk threshold is for the work we’re doing,” she says. While these challenges are not entirely new for Tiegan and other scientists working in the field, they have now become more present than ever before.

For researchers working at sea, science doesn’t stop for storms — but it sometimes must dodge them. They must always be ready to deal with threatening conditions — including towering swells and storm winds that can turn normally routine procedures, such as lowering instruments over a ship’s side, into serious safety hazards.
Cooper recalls a recent expedition off the coast of B.C. A long stretch of high winds and rough seas forced his team to repeatedly adapt by shifting sites or sheltering and waiting out the storm. In October 2023, storms chased the team across the ocean, and the atmospheric river event of November 2021 prevented their three-week expedition from reaching exposed waters. Nevertheless, to deal with the unpredictability of working on the water, Cooper and his team must monitor forecasts and track incoming weather systems to be able to make the most of every opportunity that nature might provide.

Glacier work in the Arctic is as much about patience as it is about science. Bradley knows this reality all too well from his work out of Resolute Bay, Nunavut, with the Polar Continental Shelf Program. This past June, he spent two weeks waiting for a safe weather window to reach nearby Devon Island by helicopter — only for the constantly changing conditions to keep flights grounded the entire time. While the two-week window had been planned to give sufficient time for Bradley to conduct his research, now — for the second year in a row — the project had to be postponed.
In addition to facing the practical challenges of reaching remote sites in the field, the nature of the work itself is changing as warmer temperatures continue to impact Arctic field seasons. “We’re now calling April the new May,” says Bradley, as he and other researchers must now set out earlier to avoid the snowmelt and the obstacles to glacier research that it creates.
But despite these difficulties, the work continues and science marches on. The Arctic is changing, but Bradley and other researchers are tracking these changes and accommodating them in their fieldwork — when the weather lets them.