Orientation 2013

Lots of stuff has been happening, but there's never enough time to post it! So here's a few tidbits from orientation week...

Pete and Keyes getting the cross cut competition started.

SEG students get to know one another

Lining up first and second years to form learning teams

Sage advice from Rob Macrae at the MIR centre

Your truly listening to students given sage advice

Lui Marinelli reflecting on that advice...

Scholarship winners, Cali and Laura, with friends and instructors

SEG second and third year scholarship winners: Ezra, Heidi, Mandy, Cali, and Laura!

Castlegar News - Students chip in with city planning

Here's where our second year IEP class are presenting their findings from their year long study. Good work folks!

Castlegar News - Students chip in with city planning

Alpine larch

A call from Don Pigott from Yellow Point Propagation provided a much needed excuse for a subalpine escape. Don wanted mature larch cones. The details were to find a sample of viable seeds from 10 individuals in two separate stands. Adrian Leslie and I decided to pick a relatively close by and familiar location to look for some these samples - above Whitewater ski hill, in Ymir Basin.

Leaving the ski runs below Ymir Basin

Adrian and Ellie looking for trees that had cones

 Once up to the shorter trees that we could access with our pruning pole, we discovered that other seed predators were well at work.

Adrian inspecting a poorly developed cone

 This critter was probably Strobilomyia macalpinei, something that I found a fair amount of in the stands I suveyed in the Rockies.

A problem...fly larvae were already harvesting the seeds!

An old vet..

This was a classic open, timberline stand, where avalanche disturbance and deep spring snow packs allowed the larch to continuously regenerate among surviving older seed producers. The other high elevation species, spruce, fir, and whitebark pine were relegated to protected ribbons below rock outcrops, or mature larch groups. 

In the end, a dissapointing cone crop - but a beautiful day out in the mountains and great break from the office!

Me clipping off cones, using a pruning pole.

Another cone with a smaller larvae instar

Two well developed cones, and a short shoot that couldn't make up its mind whether to be a cone or a branch

A local resident (marmot) checking us out

Orientation 2012

Well, we're at it again for 2012! So far there there are 85 new students spread over four diploma and one degree program in the School. We've had the College wide orientation, our own get together with first and returning second year students, the first week of field trips, forestry bridge installations, getting to know LANs, servers, and GIS.

SEG faculty assistant, Leanne Reitan and I, manning the orientaiton both

new students vying for cross-cut champions title!

Our new SEG crowd getting treasure hunt instructions

For me, it's been a lot learning in my new role as the Chair of the SEG. I've been getting to know a whole lot of College staff that I never really appreciated before - an eye opener!

A New Year.

Feb 2012 - It's been a busy time since Field School last spring. Right now I'm a month in teaching a revitalized forest ecology - now terrestrial ecology and biology course. For the first couple of weeks students and I have been out on the college campus learning how to identify shrubs in winter,

measuring different tree plantations, and observing evidence of out-of-season wildlife wandering around in the warmer temperatures that we've experienced this January.

more recently, this class  moved up to the Nancy Greene Lake area, west of Castlegar, to examine forest structure and ways of measuring site productivity.

Folks have been busy staring through prisms, rapping DBH tapes around trees, estimating stand ages, and generally having fun! Students will find the hard part settling down in the computer lab to restle with data that has been collected over the next few weeks...

Field school

Well, we’re halfway through field school which has been an interesting and busy time so far. The Recreation, Fish and Wildlife students started off with a chainsaw safety course where they learn how to strip down and clean saws, what safety equipment to use, and how to safely make some basic cuts.

Bucking and limbing

 Our Integrated Environmental Planning students spent the first week working on a restoration project on the City of Nelson’s shoreline. This was in conjunction with Eileen Senyk of Benchmark Environmental Services, the folks from the City of Nelson, and Thor Smestad from Terra Erosion Control Ltd. This was an interesting project where we were attempting to stabilize the softer material remaining on the small peninsulas originally created to compensate for lost fish habitat in this region of the West Arm of the Kootenay River. 

Peninsulas on the north side of the airport runway

This four day short course in environmental restoration started off with a walk through of the sites to discuss issues with Eileen, Eric White, Crystal Klym (Central Kootenay Invasive Plant Committee), and Thor.

Invasive plant discussion

live staking

Following this, the students attacked some weed hotspots and learned a number bioengineering techniques, including live staking, brush pockets, and their crowning achievement, a branch box breakwater.

Mixing humus, mycorrhizae, peatmoss, and nutrients for planting

Sharpening live stakes.

Brush pockets and the start of the branch box breakwater

Adding branches...

The first layer tiedown in the branch box

Tying down the last layer with 1/2 inch manila rope

Adding beaver protection (2 inch stucco wire). The white latex paint is to prevent sun scald

Success!

Spring to Summer 2010 (I'm trying to catch up to fall!)

Time flies! Here are a couple of pics from the tree viewing trip in the Valhallas I talked about in Feb.
 The snow was deep – but kind of reactive, Biologists Peter Corbett, Tyson Ehlers, and I were able to easily able to ski cut out small soft slabs down to a 30cm rain crust.








 
There were some big old whitebark pine trees, but many were dead (mostly beetle kill). Sadly, still a lot of high elevation logging up there, too, taking the lower tall subalpine pines. 

Nevertheless, we still manage to see the bright side of our adventure.

June, July, and August were months spent studying local ecology. I spent a day out with my daughter’s grad one class to look at aquatic insects and their habitat. 

Another day was spent up on Grassy Mountain looking at fairy spuds (spring beauty bulbs) the meadow voles had cached and forgotten, and the interesting “grassy bald”  vegetation that appears at elevations far lower than you would expect to find alpine tundra (likely due to the warmer regional climate and southern aspect creating drought stress for tree seedlings).

There were opportunities to also sample some of the local fish populations right below my office, at the confluence of the Columbia and Kootenay rivers with local biologist (and avid fisherman) Craig Smith. 

There were other professional development activities to be had out on the local rock with my colleagues Keyes Lessard and Delia Roberts

   

Our wood lot crew of Stacey and Tracey came out to help with caging whitebark pine cones to protect them from predation the Clark Nutcrackers and squirrels. 

Stacey gearing up for a tree climb

Stacey in action placing the wire mesh covering over some cones

Here's a shot of white pine blister rust spore sacs on one of the smaller whitebark sapling.

Me, fighting with some branches, the city of Castlegar in the background