Having been able to survive in the harsh Arctic climate for millennia, indigenous Northern communities have extensive intimate knowledge about the Arctic ecosystems in which they live. Increasingly, researchers are taking advantage of this wealth of knowledge to help them study the ecosystems of the Far North and how climate change is affecting them.

One programme to monitor ice cover being run by the Nunavik Research Centre (NRC), the research arm of Québec's Makivik Corporation (the recognized legal representative of Québec's Inuit population), is using traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) as baseline data to get a better understanding of how climate change is affecting ice cover in lakes and streams in Nunavik and how this is affecting populations of Arctic charr, a fish common in the Arctic that the Inuit use as a staple food source. Through this, and with the help of the Polar View conglomerate's expertise in earth observation data, the NRC hopes to be able to come up with more effective ways to help Nunavik's Inuit adapt to the changing Arctic ecosystems.

The International Polar Foundation's SciencePoles website has a closer look at this monitoring programme through a feature article on indigenous knowledge and an interview conducted with the NRC's Adam Lewis, one of the leading members of the programme.