Rising above the tall, spindly spruce trees near Wolf Creek, just south of Whitehorse, is a metal tower, festooned like a Christmas tree with instruments designed to measure aspects of climate and weather.

The tower is part of a long-term multidisciplinary research project that has been going on in the Wolf Creek drainage basin since 1992, involving water and climate studies and, more recently, expanding into ecosystem studies.

The Wolf Creek Research Basin project began with a focus on water, says Rick Janowicz, Head of the Hydrology Section in Indian and Northern Affairs Canada's Water Resources Division, Yukon. Now several universities, a handful of federal government agencies, and Yukon College are involved in various studies in the Wolf Creek area, many of them affiliated with national and international research programs.

The Wolf Creek drainage basin was chosen for research because it's conveniently close to Whitehorse and because of the variety of terrain if offers. Little Wolf Creek drains almost two hundred square kilometres of land with a change in elevation of 1300 metres, ranging from barren mountaintop to thick boreal forest.

The tower among the trees is one of three meteorological stations established in 1993 in three different ecological zones in the drainage basin. The other two are in the sub-alpine buckbrush region, which makes up more than half of the drainage basin, and higher up in the alpine tundra.

Each of the stations records air temperature, rainfall, snowfall, wind speed, humidity, solar radiation, barometric pressure, snow depth, blowing snow, soil temperature and soil heat flux.

The lower station, in the boreal forest, has sensors at intervals from 1.5 metres below the ground all the way to 20 metres above the ground, well above the forest canopy, Janowicz says. There's even a camera monitoring the snow that settles on the spruce branches.

The Wolf Creek project began as part of the Arctic Environmental Strategy and was designed to improve knowledge of Yukon waters. The information gained at Wolf Creek about how water moves through a drainage basin can be used in other parts of the Yukon for purposes like flood forecasting, environmental impact assessments, and water licence reviews, says Janowicz.

Then the site was adopted as a Canadian Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Program site, linked with the World Climate Program. The goal of the GEWEX program is to help develop accurate computer models of energy and water balance processes in order to learn more about the effects of climate change. Wolf Creek was only the third site in Canada to join the GEWEX program.

Most recently, in 1997, Wolf Creek was added to the list of about a hundred stations making up Canada's Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network (EMAN). The goal of EMAN is to monitor environmental stress on Canadian ecosystems, particularly on the plants and animals that are part of them.

"With the addition of EMAN biodiversity studies," says Janowicz, "we hope the Wolf Creek project will blossom into a fully integrated study of ecosystems."

More than a dozen separate research projects are already under way, operated by the National Hydrology Research Institute, McMaster University, the Université du Quebec, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Waterloo, York University, the University of British Columbia, Agriculture Canada, and Environment Canada.

Originally, the Wolf Creek project concentrated on water research. Now research activities have expanded to include climate and climate change, vegetation, forestry, fisheries and wildlife. Each added element increases our understanding of the complex forces at work in the drainage basin's ecosystems.

Janowicz says the Wolf Creek studies offer opportunities for broader educational use beyond university research. Yukon College uses data from Wolf Creek for student demonstrations, field exercises, and laboratory assignments. Since the Wolf Creek drainage basin is so close to Whitehorse, it could also give school classes a chance to see science in action.

For more information about the Wolf Creek Research Basin project, contact the Water Resources Division of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada or the Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, in Whitehorse.