Tag Archives: Citizen Scientists

History

How a Comox Valley fossil discovery forever changed paleontology in BC

By David Flawse, The Discourse, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In late autumn 1988, Richard Hebda — then head of botany at the Royal BC Museum — stepped into the living room of a man named Mike Trask following a report of an interesting fossil find on the Puntledge River.

According to Hebda, when he shook hands with the amateur fossil hunter, he was not expecting much. Before this, the paleobotanist had a call about dinosaur ribs in a dry creek bed near Chemainus that turned out to be dirtbike tracks.

But this stop at the Courtenay resident’s home would be different.

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Water

Studying The Water Budget For Quadra Island; a model for the future

ICAN’s water security team and the We Wai Kai First Nation have embarked upon an exploration of Quadra Island’s water systems.

While this is a Quadra study, everything they are doing is applicable to Cortes and every other British Columbian island where there is a sizeable population. They are offering a model of how we can prepare for the future.  

“The project started a number of years ago, really centered on the concerns of local people on Quadra about the nature of their water supply. People were really worried about what was going to happen with both climate change, whether it’s going to be getting hotter (particularly in the summers) and with development. Every new person that moves on to the island usually sinks a well. If they sink a well, they’re pulling quite a bit of water out of the aquifer. We wanted to know, would the aquifer actually meet our needs? Also, what needs does the environment have? And what will happen when things like climate change influences the availability of water,” explained Colin Chapman, who, together with his partner Claire Hemingway, is a key leader in this project. 

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Rivers & Oceans

Tools for Citizen Science on FolkU Radio @89.5FM

Islanders make great observers of the natural world and are helping create meaningful scientific inquiry into what is happening on and around the islands. This week on Folk U Radio, Helen Hall from Friends of Cortes Island and Kelly Fretwell from the Hakai Institute join host Manda Aufochs Gillespie to learn more about the roles of citizen scientists, the tools to help them succeed, and how FOCI and Hakai are helping to make meaningful use of data collected (and how they hope to do even more.) Join us live this Friday at 1 p.m. on 89.5FM or livestream from cortesradio.ca.

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Rivers & Oceans

DFO: a potentially transformative decade

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada is in the enviable position of having the longest coastline in the world. But our trio of oceans is being battered by a storm of negative impacts, be it overexploited fish stocks, plastics pollution, degrading marine food webs, increasingly fragile coastal ecosystems or biodiversity loss accelerated by ocean warming and acidification. Yet, at the very crest of their vulnerability, Canada’s oceans may stand to benefit from a potentially transformative decade.

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Animals, Environment

Environmental issues in small Vancouver Island communities

(Host Manda Aufochs Gillespie; written version Roy L Hales)

In this edition of the Folk U Radio’s Reporters Roundtable, our journalists talk about environmental issues in some small Vancouver Island communities. 

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