|
North Slope tundra pond study starts this winter UAF leads research team looking at effects of drawing water from North Slope ponds for ice road construction Patricia Jones PNA Contributing Writer
A collaborative research effort involving industry, university researchers and governmental funding will study the physical, biological and chemical effects of pumping water from North Slope ponds for use in ice road construction during winter months.
The three-year study will start during this winter’s construction season on the slope, according to Larry Hinzman, a professor in the Water and Environmental Research Center of the Institute of Northern Engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Hinzman is one of the principal investigators in the research project, which carries a $1.5 million price tag.
“The idea arose through industry,” he said. “We had been doing hydrologic studies on the North Slope for a long time, and BP asked us to look into the issue of tundra ponds, so we wrote the proposal to the Department of Energy.”
DOE, through the UAF Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory, is contributing more than half of the cost of the three-year program — $800,000. BP Exploration and ConocoPhillips will contribute the remaining amount, Hinzman said.
Some contributions in-kind Some of those industry contributions will come through in-kind donations, such as transportation and housing in the Arctic, according to ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Dawn Patience.
“There have been no monetary donations from ConocoPhillips,” she said. “This gives us the opportunity to obtain scientific data that may augment the data we’ve already gathered about our current operations, or for use in future developments.”
Other organizations and agencies involved in the research include GW Scientific, which is providing assistance with specialized instrumentation; the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; the state Department of Natural Resources; the state Department of Fish and Game and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.
“Everybody has a vested interest in this,” Hinzman said. “We brought together a lot of different perspectives and issues that hadn’t been considered, and we ended up changing the plan to make it broader, to incorporate everyone’s wishes as much as possible.” Comparison to control group Hinzman’s research group will monitor up to three ponds that are being tapped to supply water for ice road construction, and up to three ponds that are not used, as a control group.
Electronic monitoring equipment will be set up just prior to the start of water pumping during this winter’s ice road construction season, he said. Throughout the study, researchers and the oil producers will be able to access information from the study locations which will be updated hourly and posted on the Web, Hinzman said.
The study will look at water balance — such as monitoring changes in pond volume, measuring the influx and outflow of water, measuring spring snowpack and snowmelt in the pond. Researchers will also look at biological dynamics, by assessing turbidity of water and monitoring fish response during pumping through video recording.
Researchers will also measure pond chemistry prior to and following the spring melt, prior to pumping activity and within a week of the pumping and during the summer. Physical characteristics of the pond will also be measured, including temperature, structural stability of mud bottoms, pond surface area and interaction between ponds or nearby rivers.
“I think what we’re going to see is that most of the effects are going to be determined whether the pond can be recharged during spring melt,” Hinzman said. “They essentially evaporate during summer, because there is not enough rainfall to recharge ponds. A big consequence of any impact is what the drainage area is — where the water comes from during spring melt.”
How much pumping? Current DNR regulations require that no more than 15 percent of the volume of unfrozen water under the top layer of ice may be removed from North Slope ponds. One of the study’s objectives is to determine to what extent pumping may be permitted — what percent of water volume under ice — before physical and biological impacts are detectable and quantifiable.
That will help producers safely locate and use ponds near areas where they are working, Hinzman said.
“It depends on where you go, but there are a lot of ponds on the North Slope,” Hinzman said. “The criteria (for pond selection) are relatively strict, and the companies want ponds so they do not have to haul water too far.”
The study is also designed to determine what physical changes occur in tundra ponds as pumping occurs and characterize how those changes in physical environment will impact biological processes.
The study will document through modeling studies which ponds are suitable for water extraction and what those pumping limits are under a range of environmental scenarios.
This information could help future exploration programs, as oil companies move further west and further east from existing infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay.
“There are a lot of ponds around Prudhoe Bay and NPR-A, but in ANWR, the water resource is important,” Hinzman said. “There are not many lakes in ANWR, so it is a very serious issue.”
| 