Collaborative seasonal monitoring of rivers within the Dehcho and South Slave regions of the Northwest Territories and Dene Tha' lands of Northern Alberta

This project samples 19 streams throughout the Dehcho and South Slave regions of the Northwest Territories and throughout the Hay River basin of Northern Alberta. Samples are collected throughout the open water season through a collaborative effort between the university of Alberta; Dehcho Aboriginal Aquatic Resource and Oceans Management (AAROM), Dehcho First Nations, Kátł’odeeche Fırst Nation Lands Department; Nahendeh Kehotsendı̨ Program, Dene Tha' First Nation's Lands Department, and Department of Environment and Climate Change; Government of NWT. Data collection began in 2020 with a subset of streams, with additional streams added throughout 2021 to reach 19 streams total. This data represents the beginning of a multi-year collection effort which will allow us to monitor variations in water chemistry between years, particularly for methylmercury, a parameter less commonly sampled.

Citation

University of Alberta; Dehcho Aboriginal Aquatic Resource and Oceans Management (AAROM); Dehcho First Nations; Kátł’odeeche Fırst Nation Lands Department, Nahendeh Kehotsendı̨ Program; Dene Tha' First Nation's Lands Department; Department of Environment and Climate Change, Government of NWT. 2024-08-04. "Collaborative seasonal monitoring of rivers within the Dehcho and South Slave regions of the Northwest Territories and Dene Tha' lands of Northern Alberta" (dataset). 4.0.0. DataStream. https://doi.org/10.25976/ndf7-nu19.

Funding Sources

Northwest Territories Cumulative Impacts Monitoring Program, Alberta - NWT Transboundary Water Agreement, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, University of Alberta North, University of Alberta.

Data Collection Information

Water samples were collected from the edge of each river or stream. Water for mercury (Hg) and methylmercury (MeHg) analysis was collected using clean hands - dirty hands protocol in 125 mL and 250 mL bottles respectively. At a subset of streams, we also collected filtered Hg and MeHg samples where an extra bottle of each was collected and filtered through acid cleaned 0.45 um cellulose nitrate filter towers into a new bottle within 24 hours. Hg and MeHg samples were preserved with 0.2% and 0.4% trace grade hydrochloric acid respectively. Additional grab samples were collected and filtered in the field using 0.7 um Whatman filters. We collected a 60 mL amber glass bottle, which was preserved with hydrochloric acid and analysed for dissolved organic carbon and cation analysis. A second 60 ml Nalgene LDPE bottle was collected and remained un-acidified for anion analysis. Measurements of turbidity were collected using a calibrated LaMotte 2020i Turbidity meter, water temperature, pH, and electrical conductivity were measured using a calibrated Thermo Scientific Elite PCTS pH/Conductivity/TDS/Salinity Pocket tester or calibrated PT1 and PT2 Ultrapens (Myron L Company, USA).

Attribution Licence (ODC-By) v1.0

You are free to share, copy, distribute, use, modify, transform, build upon, and produce works from the data as long as you attribute any public use of the data, or works produced from the data, in the manner specified in the licence. For any use or redistribution of the data, or works produced from it, you must make clear to others the licence of the data and keep intact any notices on the original data. https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1-0/

API Access

curl -G https://api.datastream.org/v1/odata/v4/Records --data-urlencode "\\$filter=DOI eq '10.25976/ndf7-nu19'" -H "x-api-key: PRIVATE-API-KEY"

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