Rachel Mandryk

2022 Weston Family Awards in Northern Research recipient

Master’s student
Carleton University

Originally from Manitoba, Rachel was first introduced to northern research as an undergraduate student at the University of Manitoba when she worked as a research assistant on the CCGS Amundsen in the Canadian Arctic. The results of her undergraduate honours thesis on diffusive methane fluxes in Lake Winnipeg were published in a special issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research.

After graduating, Rachel moved to Ottawa to begin her master’s at Carleton University where she continues to study greenhouse gas fluxes. The focus of Rachel’s current research is on how expansion of shrubs in the low Arctic tundra of the Northwest Territories affects production and emission of carbon dioxide. She is using chambers that measure soil-atmospheric carbon dioxide flux year-round and under snow cover. Rachel hopes to understand how the height and size of shrubs impacts decomposition rates of organic material in the soil and subsequent respiration of carbon dioxide, as well as how shrubs contribute to carbon cycling at an ecosystem scale.

Learn more about the Weston Family Awards in Northern Research.