Landslides and uncertainty: As Nunavik's permafrost melts, locals and researchers focus on adaptation

Camping in the rainy and foggy community of Salluit last weekend, Michael Cameron saw yet another mudslide.

A lifelong resident of the second northernmost Inuit community in Quebec, he's used to witnessing landslides over the past few decades as his town of about 1,600 slowly warms.

"It's all got to do with the Earth actually warming up," Cameron said. "Even if it's 0.2 of a degree. It doesn't seem like much, but it's a lot up here."

"Like today, right now we're at 17 C. In normal times, [it's] usually around 11 C to 15 C."

Cameron says those changing temperatures, causing winters to be shorter and summers longer in Nunavik, is also thawing the permafrost — the thick layer of ground that remains below 0 C year round for at least two years.

Due to the thaw, Cameron says the community has experienced two landslides just this year.

"It was a little surprising," said Cameron. "It's almost like an avalanche. You see where the top soil slid and you see the bottom layer which is practically clay."

The Uumajuit warden co-ordinator for Nunavik under the Kativik Regional Government, Cameron says these events pose serious challenges to the community built on frozen ground.

It's why he's one of the locals working with Université Laval and the Research Chair for Permafrost Geomorphology in Nunavik as they study the ground with the goal of helping communities adapt to changes.

Of the 14 Inuit communities in Nunavik, only one — Kuujjuarapik — doesn't have permafrost within its municipality, said Pascale Roy-Léveillée, who holds the Partnership Research Chair on Permafrost Geomorphology in Nunavik.

Leading a multidisciplinary team, as the scientific director and an associate professor in the department of geography at Université Laval, she says the province just announced an additional $600,000 in funding to allow her team to continue its research in Nunavik for the next two years.

Essential to the work is the team's collaboration with locals.

"The communities have clearly expressed that they want to not just help plan the project, they want to be out and they want to see what we see and they want to go where we go. And they really want to participate [not just] in the monitoring, but also in the research," said Roy-Léveillée.

Of particular concern to communities is how the permafrost thaw could limit access to land, hunting and fishing — and even render homes unstable.