Élise Devoie PhD

I focus on responsible and productive ways to study hydrology and hydrogeology in cold regions. I am particularly interested in climate change in permafrost environments and improving our predictive capacity through combining modelling and fieldwork. I bring together the worlds of modelling and fieldwork to try to solve real-world problems facing people who live in Canada’s North.  

Education 

Selected Awards 

Academic Experience 

Permafrost is ground (soil or rock) that is at or below 0˚ C for two or more consecutive years. Anthropogenic climate change is driving cold regions to warm at up to twice the average global rate, and resulting in widespread permafrost thaw, and warming of the subsurface. This has important implications for how water moves and is stored in these landscapes and impacts everything from the structural properties of soils to the water quality in waterways. My work tries to address the question: How is climate change impacting frozen soils, and what are complex way these changes are felt? 

This question is especially important to communities directly affected by permafrost thaw, and community engagement is an important pillar of my research. I work to make sure that the research problems I am trying to solve align with community priorities. My research is unique because it bridges disciplines. I use a combination of field data collection, laboratory investigation, and numerical modelling to try to understand observed changes and make predictions for the future. Some of my favourite research questions come from bringing together disciplines that are usually separate.  

	Is Permafrost Frozen?  This question is especially important to communities directly affected by permafrost thaw, and community engagement is an important pillar of my research. I work to make sure that the research problems I am trying to solve align with community priorities. My research is unique because it bridges disciplines. I use a combination of field data collection, laboratory investigation, and numerical modelling to try to understand observed changes and make predictions for the future. Some of my favourite research questions come from bringing together disciplines that are usually separate.
	Is there a better way to model freeze/thaw?  The freeze/thaw process is notoriously difficult to model because it is not mathematically ‘smooth’. When we include it in our models, we do get hugely improved results, but it also often causes them to slow down by up to 100x, or just straight up crash! I’m working on some semi-analytical techniques to speed up models including freeze/thaw and improve model performance. After all, it is not just permafrost systems that need this type of model, but also anywhere the ground freezes!
	How does permafrost thaw affect water resources?  Intuitively it is clear that the loss of permafrost will have strong implications for every aspect of permafrost landscapes. But what shape will this change take? I conduct field investigations to measure the changes that are being observed, and to understand the implications they are having on the way water moves and is stored in the landscape.

For an up-to-date record, please consult my Google Scholar page.  

Selected Publications 

Devoie, É. G., Gruber S. & McKenzie J. (2022). A repository of measured soil freezing characteristic curves: 1921 to 2021. Earth Systems Science Data, 14, 3365–3377. 

Devoie, É. G., Craig, J. R., Dominico, M., Carpino, O., Connon, R. F., Rudy, A. C., & Quinton, W. L. (2021). Mechanisms of Discontinuous Permafrost Thaw in Peatlands. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 126(11). 

Devoie, É. G., Connon, R. F., Craig, J. R., & Quinton, W. L. (2020). Subsurface flow measurements using passive flux meters in variably-saturated cold-regions landscapes. Hydrological Processes, 34(23), 4541-4546. 

Devoie, É. G., & Craig, J. R. (2020). A semianalytical interface model of soil freeze/thaw and permafrost evolution. Water Resources Research, 56(8). 

Devoie, É. G., Craig, J. R., Connon, R. F., & Quinton, W. L. (2019). Taliks: A tipping point in discontinuous permafrost degradation in peatlands. Water Resources Research, 55(11), 9838-9857. 

I am always looking for curious and motivated students who are interested in climate change research in cold regions. If this is you, especially if you have an exciting project idea, please send me a cover, CV, and transcript with the subject line “Climate Change Graduate Research at Queen’s”. 

Right now, I am specifically looking for a PhD student who will start no later than Fall 2024, to work on the following project:

Current large-scale permafrost models represent soils using a binary frozen/thawed state, lacking rigorous representation of soil freezing through representative soil freezing characteristic curves (SFCCs). To accurately quantify the ice content of frozen and partially frozen soils in large-scale models, you will derive an extension to a semi-analytical interface model to include partially frozen soils and make it into an ArcMap toolboxrun the model using Canadian weather station data, the surficial geology map of Canada, the Ground Ice Map of Canada, and the National Soils Database to define the SFCC. The model will be validated against data collected in the field in three permafrost sites in collaboration with the Guardian program in each region (Indigenous partners in climate change research and monitoring). Current permafrost maps do not include SFCCs, or segregated ground ice and consequently significantly misrepresent ice content. GIS experience required.

To find out more on how to apply to graduate school at Queen’s University, please find the link here.