View source for Scotty Creek, NWT Canada, 1990s -

== History ==
Dr. William (Bill) Quinton is the Director of the Scotty Creek Research Station (SCRS). He is also Director of the Cold Regions Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he was appointed as a Canada Research Chair in Cold Regions Hydrology (August, 2005). Quinton has worked in the Northwest Territories since 1987, and in the Fort Simpson region since 1999. Also a founding member of the Laurier-GNWT Partnership Agreement (http://wlu.ca/northern-research), he enjoys a long-standing working relationship with the Dehcho First Nations, Liidlii Kue First Nation and Jean Marie River First Nation (http://jmrfn.com/), and other Indigenous communities.

At the time field studies began at Scotty Creek, the hydrological function of such low-relief, peatland-dominated zones of discontinuous permafrost was poorly understood. The first gauging station was installed at Scotty Creek in 1996, followed by the establishment of the SCRS basecamp. Over the years, infrastructure at the SCRS was expanded and the following equipment were installed in various land-cover features: water level recorders, ground temperature sensors, hydrometric sensors, ground thaw surveys, snow courses for annual snow surveys, climate stations, soil pits, wells, flux towers, deep thermistor profiles, and experimental thermosyphons along seismic lines. Field-based studies over this period formed the basis of new conceptual models, which in turn shaped the development of numerical simulations of the hydrological processes for this environment (Quinton et al., 2019). Field and modelling studies have generated new insights into the thermal and physical mechanisms governing the flux and storage of water in the wetland-dominated regions of the discontinuous permafrost zone, that characterises much of the Canadian and circumpolar subarctic. Research at Scotty Creek has coincided with a period of unprecedented climate warming, permafrost thaw, and resulting land cover transformations including the expansion of wetland areas and loss of forests. 

Given the region’s rapidly warming climate, permafrost thaw, and concomitant land-cover changes, there is an urgent need on the part of provincial, territorial, and federal government agencies, NGOs, Aboriginal communities and industry to understand how these land-cover changes affect their shared water resources today and in the future. In response to this need SCRS researchers are working to 1) develop and mobilise new knowledge on the hydrological and ecological impacts of permafrost thaw, 2) develop new modelling tools to predict the rates and patterns of permafrost thaw and the hydrological and ecological consequences, and 3) provide interactive training on these tools to end-users. For more information regarding past, ongoing and future studies at Scotty Creek see Quinton et al. (2019).