Week 5 - Agriculture!

AGRICULTURE DAY! 

We met up with Robin of Roots and Shoots farm in Manotick just outside of the city. This location is prime to get local product to market without using excess resources (Azadi et al., 2011). From the farm the produce gets sold at weekend markets and directly to the community through his CSA.

We were his farm hands for the morning. 

He took us on a little tour first though. 

Spinach growing in a greenhouse he bought used on Kijiji. He rotates what crops are grown in the greenhouse ending the season with winter lettuces and greens. 

Harvested squash.

The van I see parked at Carleton during the Sunday market at Brewer Park. 

The class is standing behind the converted cold room for storage/ kitchen for the interns. On the right side is a system of sinks (bathtubs) for washing before sorting the produce into bins.

He cut costs by purchasing used farm equipment designed for small farms. 

We walked into the fields as he explained what permaculture practices he adopted and sets us straight to work on the carrots and beets. 

Connor, Taylor and Melissa, carrot-picker extraordinaires. 

Zoomed in. Whatta gem. 

The afternoon was spent in a compost facility where all City of Ottawa greenbox waste is sent. 

I felt just like Wall E from the clip below. Except with steam and rain and flies. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH61dU_NKxw

We were given a tour of the facility with 6 compost tunnels covering 50 acres where 60 trucks a day deliver Ottawa's  compost waste. The tunnels are kept at 55 C for 5 -15 days to kill pathogens.

He said in the winter it snows inside, I can't even imagine the horror. 

But it was a learning experience. I learnt that I want to farm and never ever go to a dump or compost facility again. I learn something new everyday (especially Friday's). <3

AZADI, H., S. SCHOONBEEK, H. MAHMOUDI, B. DERUDDER, P. DE MAEYER & F. WITLOX (2011) “Organic agriculture and sustainable food production system: Main potentials”. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. Vol. 144 (1), pp. 92-94.

Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J., & Befort, B. L. (2011). Global food demand and the sustainable intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(50), 20260–20264. 

Week 4 - Parks Conservation & Management at Gatineau Park

As the weather was looking up we ventured over the bridge to Gatineau Park.

I now wonder if this building was LEED certified...

Mitten weather!

 Louis from the park gave us a presentation on the history as well as management problems they face, such as :

• User/ user conflicts
• ex. Climbers vs. bikers
• User/ Residents (wildlife)
• Habitat degradation

He asked our opinion on whether the natural ecology of the park was salvageable and I was/am not optimistic. People "need" access roads, roads fragment habitat affecting species in many negative ways such as construction pollutants, species segregation and increased human traffic.

To protect nature we must limit human interaction. 

In a paper by Thurston and Reader the affect of recreational activities (hiking and biking) on forest vegetation was studied and both activities were found to have devastating effects on the vegetation but once discontinued, the forest had a full recovery (2001). 

I think that these findings point towards the discontinuation of activities but in Gatineau Park they are  alternating trails to allow for periodic restoration. 

Something I noticed when speaking with the protection/ conservation people was the approach they took to getting "users" involved. Instead of saying, it's nature's park, treat it with respect (take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints), they take the approach to park "ownership". It's your park to keep clean.. etc.

I did not agree with that approach and think that it should be rethought. 

After the presentation we all reverted to our 7-year old selfs and played around in the welcome center.

A peculiar looking bear

Interactive learning!

Blanding's replica

 We roll out of the welcome center in search of a backdrop for Connor's talk and look what we find...

Perfect! and freezing!

Before his mustache took over, Connor informed the group all about the importance of beavers to the colonization of Canada, their ecosystem engineering abilities and how in the hopes to start a fur trade they became European invasive species. 

Giant grass.

Steve looks mad but he's just enthusiastic about this particular beaver dam stopper!

People live in Gatineau Park which is something I couldn't wrap my head around. How could it be a nature reserve and a residential area?? The need for power and services cannot be ignored.   

The lake we are standing on the shore of has homes along the left. 

As snow falls magically around her, Tiana informs the class about coyotes. She focussed on their range expansion into city centers and what is being done about it. 

SNOW!

http://we.got.net/~landauer/mtb/Guelph_MTB_study.pdf

http://www.mun.ca/biology/ywiersma/BIOC4041.pdf

Week 3

My best friend had a baby! Little Lily was born while my classmates were trekking around Watt's learning about turtles :(

But look at all that hair!

And how un traumatized she is when I hold her. 

She loves me. 

Week 2 - Watts Creek

This week instead of driving all the way to QUBS we instead trekked to Watts Creek in Ottawa for a lesson on river restoration.

The weather was dreary but the chest waders worked their magic :) Did you know they have an inside pocket. Perfect size for apples!

 

Last week, the idea of restoration projects (no net loss, new gain) was introduced. These projects are important for managers charged to reverse damage. But just creating new habitat does not guarantee species restoration. 

In a paper by Bond and Lake, 5 issues were found to affect success of species restoration (Bond & Lake, 2003):

• Barriers to colonization
• Temporal shifts in habitat use
• Introduced species
• Long-term and large scale processes
• Inappropriate scales of restoration

Eva from NCC came to speak with us about Greenbelt research and restoration. The Greenbelt covers 200,000 acres, 50% of which is natural area and is the largest federally owned greenbelt in the world.

Unfortunately the NCC has no say over what happens upstream of the Greenbelt, with storm water management being the greatest challenge.

As I mentioned, it was dreary. Soggy sandwiches for everyone!

But just being out of the classroom is such a treat! 

And we all love to get our hands dirty. 

 We were focussing on restoring flow, we separated into groups and waded through the water looking for felled trees and fallen edges of the creek that would impede flow .

Fallen edges could be tacked up and held into place with metal rods, felled trees we had to decide to what extent they were removed. The felled trees provide important habitat for aquatic species so if we could, we left the tree (or most of it) and removed branches that were catching debris and creating dams instead.

Confluence

Wood duck box!

Found wildflowers :) Left the invasive purple loosestrife alone. 

Ecosystem engineer Caleigh!

Speaking of ecosystem engineers... an array of animals act as ecosystem engineers from salmon to beavers to hippos. Their significant impact on ecosystems and how easily affected they are by humans makes them an important topic of study (Moore, 2006). 

Bond, N. R., & LAKE, P. S. (2003). Local habitat restoration in streams: constraints on the effectiveness of restoration for stream biota. Ecological Management & Restoration, 4(3), 193–198.

Moore, J. W. (2006). Animal Ecosystem Engineers in Streams. BioScience, 56(3), 237-246