“It meant a lot to me to win this award because injuries resulting from climate change in the Western Arctic are a crucial issue that haven’t received a lot of attention yet,” said Kaitlin Breton-Honeyman, who won second place in the health sciences category for her poster entitled Climate Change, Public Health and Safety in the Arctic. “For Inuit, health and safety on the land is of particular concern as many communities report increasingly frequent uncharacteristic weather and sea-ice conditions putting hunters and others at greater risk than ever before.”

Her classmate Jennie Knopp placed third in the social sciences category for her poster Bridging the Gap: Linking Scientific and Traditional Knowledge with Community-Based Monitoring. Ms. Knopp and Ms. Breton-Honeyman were two of only twelve award winners out of a field of 320 posters.

Supervising both students through the Environmental and Life Sciences Graduate Studies Program is Trent’s Dr. Chris Furgal, a professor of Indigenous and Environmental Studies [link to http://www.trentu.ca/ies/ ]and member of the conference’s international organizing committee. "I was extremely pleased and proud to learn of the recognition given to both Kaitlin and Jennie's poster presentations at the Arctic Change conference. To be awarded for outstanding work among the large number of students in attendance is a great achievement,” he said. “It is also an indication of the interest in the innovative research being undertaken by graduate students working with me and others at Trent in the areas of Indigenous peoples, environment and health issues. Trent had a great showing and presence at the conference, and this was exemplified by these student awards."

Considered one of Canada’s leading experts in combining Indigenous and scientific knowledge, Professor Furgal gave several presentations on his research that explores how climate change is transforming how people survive in the Arctic. “The Arctic is experiencing some of the most rapid effects of climate change globally and how northern residents are able cope with the variety of changes they face is of particular concern for their health and safety,” he explained. Prof. Furgal and his graduate students presented how changing ice conditions affect northern peoples’ ability to hunt and fish, and the emergence of vulnerability assessments as an informative research approach to understanding potential impacts and identifying characteristics of those communities and individuals most at-risk.

Coinciding with the pinnacle of the International Polar Year, Arctic Change 2008 gathered researchers, students, policy makers and stakeholders from all fields of Arctic research and all countries to address the global challenges and opportunities brought by climate change in the circum-Arctic. With over 900 participants, Arctic Change 2008 was the largest trans-sectoral international Arctic research conference ever held in Canada. The conference ran from December 9 to12, 2008.

For further information about Prof. Chris Furgal’s research, please visit his web site.