The Beaver Ecohydrology Lab's research is organized across a set of field sites that function as natural laboratories spanning major environmental gradients. These sites allow us to investigate how beaver-driven hydrological and ecological processes emerge, scale, and reorganize under contrasting conditions.
Sibbald Fen is a beaver-structured wetland complex in the Rocky Mountain foothills that serves as our primary field laboratory for understanding how engineered hydrological networks function. Research here focuses on how beaver dams, canals, and ponds interact to regulate water storage, connectivity, and flow timing across interconnected landscapes, and how these hydrological changes propagate through the system. Using dense sensor networks, repeated UAV surveys and wildlife cameras, we quantify how water moves through beaver-modified systems and how changes in connectivity influence water quality, carbon dynamics, vegetation patterns, and wildlife use. A key goal is to identify the conditions under which hydrological connectivity reorganizes across space and time, and how these shifts cascade through broader ecosystem processes under a changing climate. Sibbald fen is a UNESCO Ecohydrology Demonstration Site located about 60 km west of Calgary.
In the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, we are studying the rapid expansion of beavers into Arctic drainage systems and the ecological transformations that follow. This new research focuses on how beaver ecosystem engineering influences biodiversity across terrestrial, semi-aquatic, and aquatic habitats, using a combination of wildlife camera networks and environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling alongside complementary ecohydrological measurements. These approaches are allowing us to assess how beaver-created habitat heterogeneity shapes species presence, movement, and community structure in rapidly changing northern environments. Included in the research is an applied component that explores the utility of select beaver management approaches in helping to mitigate some of the unwanted effects of beavers in sensitive permafrost terrain. Working with local partners, particularly the Imaryuk Monitors (the Indigenous guardians of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region), this research links ecosystem processes with community-relevant concerns about landscape change in northern regions undergoing ongoing regime shifts.
Besnard Lake is a large boreal lake system where repeated wildfire has reshaped shoreline forests and riparian habitats over the past decade. Our research explores how beaver populations respond to this shifting mosaic of disturbance, with a focus on how fire history and the persistence of riparian vegetation influence lodge occupancy and lake-to-lake hydrological and ecological connectivity. The lake is about 75 km west of La Ronge.