Collaborative Research: Diamonds and Oil from the Tundra: A System Study on the Impact of Changing Seasons on Mining and Oil Exploration NSF Award 0902130

From this small system, we then seek to generalize the results to an assessment of the impact of seasons on transportation and economic decisions in the North. Most of the project work consisted of riding on the ice roads, discussing their construction and operation with officials, and mining public data archives for climate and socio-economic data.

On-site research consisted of visiting Yellowknife twice, along with the outlying communities of Dettah and Wha-Ti. We met with both representatives of the Joint Venture Ice Road (business -- serves the three mines) and the Government of Northwest Territories Ice Roads (government -- serves three native communities) (Fig. 1). We drove on both ice roads twice, once in January 2010 to see their construction, and once in March 2010 to see the finished product just before the road closed.