Thermographs

The Gespe’gewa’gi Institute of Natural Understanding (GINU) annually deploys thermographs in several rivers in Quebec and New Brunswick. These small temperature loggers are anchored to the riverbed in 20 to 30 different locations throughout the Restigouche River Watershed.

Our team replaces the thermographs twice a year, to change their batteries and download their information. As climate change concerns increase, the importance of this research grows in importance.

“It is important to know what is going on with our river system. The water is warming up. Climate change has an impact on everything in the river and monitoring changes over time will  help us make well informed decisions,” explained GINU biologist Billie Chiasson.

The data collected is shared with a network group comprised of universities, federal and provincial agencies, and watershed groups. This information is shared in a centralized database called Rivtemp. GINU has been conducting water temperature research since 2014 and will continue to monitor the river temperatures on our territory.