TUKTOYAKTUK, N.W.T. — Vancouver-based ecologist Greg Henry studies the changes man and nature are wreaking on the North. Ron Gruben, who grew up on the Beaufort coastline, lives them.

But both have the same hope for a unique conference that opened Tuesday bringing together scientists, bureaucrats and aboriginals to look at ways to adapt to the changing Arctic coast.

"I hope that western science and traditional knowledge can come together to preserve the environment," said Gruben. "Once you scar the land, it never heals."

About 275 delegates from across the North -- including scientists from nine federal departments and three territories, native hunters and trappers and aboriginal representatives -- are meeting this week in an exploration camp built during the 1970s energy exploration boom to attempt just that.

Conference sponsor Coastal Zone Canada Association has held similar gatherings focusing on every coastline in the country. As climate change and oil and gas drilling bear down on the fragile northern ocean and tundra, it's high time the Arctic got similar treatment, said conference organizer Jack Mathias.

"This is the first (conference) to take a broad look at the coastal zone," said Mathias, a senior planner with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

"This will be the first time that we look across all these sectors in the presence of the people mostly affected."

Those effects are real.

"Energy development is just starting up," said Gruben. "You see a lot of seismic lines out there."

You also see a lot of landslides, where permafrost has melted beneath the hills, and animals straying from their normal ranges due to subtle disruptions they already detect.

Henry dissects the changing North from a scientist's perspective. He's helped run a 12-year experiment attempting to find out what happens when tundra warms up. The increasing number of shrubs now growing in his greenhouses corresponds almost exactly with what's actually happening on the land.

"It's definitely due to warming and it's happening already," he said.

"In every case, every report shows increased cover of shrubs. It really has increased quite dramatically."

Other scientists will discuss how Atlantic cod could be headed north on an "oceanic heat wave" drifting in from Russia or how more shipping through increasingly ice-free northern waters will affect Arctic communities.

The problems of drilling for oil and gas in Arctic waters that are routinely scoured by ice are also on the agenda, as are potential threats to navigation caused by submerged artificial islands built and sunk during the 1970s exploration boom.

Others will explain how the coastline itself is being recarved as climate change defrosts the frozen gravel that comprises Canada's northern land.

By the end of the century, the number of severe open-water storms that wash away the bluffs and beaches is expected to increase by 60 per cent. Floods that now come only every 25 years are expected to arrive annually.

Mathias points out that few Arctic land claims even discuss issues such as development of deep-sea ports and other transportation issues, or assign responsibility for regulating undersea mining or shipping.

"We're just playing catch-up here."

The conference is expected to end Friday with a declaration outlining policy directions for the various governments involved.

"What we're trying to do here is link science with management with government policy," Mathias said.

"It's beginning to sink in that the changes here are going to be much quicker and more dramatic than we thought."