 Photo 1. Part of Dr. Reimchen’s collection at the University of Victoria. Image credit: Sarah Sanderson The data rescue intern:
Sarah Sanderson For more than five decades, Dr. Thomas Reimchen has conducted extensive research on the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) of Haida Gwaii (X̱aaydag̱a Gwaay.yaay), a culturally- and ecologically- significant archipelago off the coast of British Columbia. Threespine sticklebacks are an important model system in eco-evolutionary biology, and while the species is found across the Northern Hemisphere, those found in Haida Gwaii are particularly distinct. In fact, the sticklebacks of Haida Gwaii show as much phenotypic variation in this one small area as can be found across their entire Northern Hemisphere range. The data rescue intern:
Elizabeth Houghton Over 1500 water chemistry records from Saskatchewan water bodies were collected by the Saskatchewan Fisheries Research Laboratory in Saskatoon, SK spanning from the years 1920-1990. Each record was typewritten and contained up to 86 water chemistry parameters. The locations of where these water quality samples were collected from were largely recorded based on approximate coordinates, nearby landmarks or towns, or legal land descriptions. The Saskatchewan Fisheries Research Laboratory was shut down in the early 1990s due to lack of funding, and these paper records were left to the fisheries unit of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment in binders. These records serve as a valuable baseline for water quality data for an unprecedented number of waters across the province of Saskatchewan. The data rescue intern:
Michael Mensah Since its establishment in 1962, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and its supporters have been committed to protecting over 14 million hectares (more than 35 million acres) of ecologically significant lands across Canada. This internship involved working with baseline documentation reports which capture species inventories and impact assessment data collected on over 50,000 acres of land managed by NCC in southern Saskatchewan since 2004. The data rescue intern:
Keerthikrutha Seetharaman Internship Agency: Atlantic Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) Project Title: Historical Pesticide Applications in the Forests of Atlantic Canada Project background and Internship goal/s: Starting around the 1950s, insecticides were sprayed aerially across the Boreal forests of Canada to control insects that threatened the growth of commercially viable trees. Even though this spraying stopped around the 1980s, the action of spraying harmful pesticides such as DDT may have had long-lasting effects. Thus, the aim of this project is to understand legacy effects of pesticide use across the different provinces of Canada. The main goal of this internship is the Quality Assurance /Quality Control (QA/QC) of historical pesticide spraying data for Newfoundland and Labrador (NFL) in Canada. The data rescue intern:
Caroline Dallstream Collection of the long-term ecological database for the Turkey Lakes Watershed in Ontario began in 1979 with the intention to evaluate anthropogenic and disturbance impacts on the watershed by monitoring its air, water, land, and biological communities. It was initiated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) with the initial mission of determining the impacts of acid rain in the watershed, but many other questions have been considered since. The main goal of the Data Rescue Internship was to prepare the data collected by the DFO in the Turkey Lakes from 1979 to 2008 on the water chemistry and temperature, chlorophyll, phytoplankton, fish, benthos, zooplankton for submission to a public repository, the Government of Canada’s Open Data Portal. Data files existed in a variety of formats, including paper, Excel, and a Microsoft Access database. Over the course of the internship, the project was expanded to include additional data collected by the DFO in the Magpie and Batchawana Rivers and various headwaters lakes in Ontario. The data rescue intern: Sophia Fan
Forest ecosystems are crucial for many of the natural processes humans and wildlife need to survive. For example, they affect water flow and water quality in watersheds, prevent soil erosion, provide habitat for wildlife, and are key for mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration. However, forests often undergo many forms of disturbance. Some are beneficial or even needed for proper forest regeneration (e.g., fire regimes) while others may have negative consequences (e.g., overharvesting, insect pests). Because forest ecosystems take a long time to grow and regenerate, any detectable changes may take decades to realize after disturbances. Therefore, understanding and predicting forest resilience to these disturbances, in addition to properly managing post-disturbance forests, is therefore crucial to mitigating the loss of forests and their services. The data rescue intern: Billi Krochuck
Bird populations have experienced marked declines across Canada in recent decades; grassland bird species are among those which have experienced the greatest population declines. Indeed, in Canada these species have experienced declines of approximately 60% since the 1970s. This is primarily due to loss of habitat or habitat degradation, whether through conversion to commercial monoculture agriculture or through poor land management practices. This underlines the importance of monitoring these species. |
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