Monday, October 27, 2014

Here's a little Castlegar News piece from a week ago week when the Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens' Services stopped by the College for a look at the Selkirk Geospatial Research Centre (SGRC) and the Rural Development Institute (RDI). I was out of town, but apparently Andrew Wilkinson was impressed by the research and innovation efforts he saw (how could he not?). Hats of to Ian, Terri, and their respective teams!


Tuesday, October 21, 2014







I went out recently with SEG's fisheries biologist/instructor Rena Vandenbos to prepare for RFW field lab. We when back to the same area up the Kootenay River north of Castlegar and set traps up Glade Creek. Here's Rena and our young assistant placing several of the traps.


Adriana tying in a submerged trap

Chief trap setter finishing one of the placements.

Here's what the trap looks like in situ.


On our way the last trap placement, Adrian spotted this locally rare bull trout. Got to love water resistant cell phones... I'm using a Samsung S5, and I've been pretty happy with the camera results. This is in a forest with low Fall evening light and me just holding the phone under and clicking - no post production.


















The end result was for the lab was no bull trout caught in the traps, but lots of rainbow fry. Always pays to keep your eyes open for other information outside of your experimental design - makes for some great new questions to ask.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Catch up!

Catch up.
Ok, one a year does not make a blog! So much happened over the last year at the College and the applied environmental field in the Kootenays, it's a bit over whelming to report out on, but there is lots of cool stuff that I've meant to share, so I'm going to take a few posts here to show off, mostly with images. Here we go...

Every fall instructors in our RFW program have to get ready for fall RFW field school. Part of these 10 days are spent working on measuring fish populations.
Rena and her young research assistant, Adriana, setting up minnow traps


In October last year, Doris Hauslietner and I took her IEP 260 class up on Cornice Ridge in Stageleap Provincial Park to do some vegetation monitoring with with the Parks staff, and to assess the whitebark pine population health in that area.

Unloading at top of the Salmo-Creston Pass

Students getting to more open vegetation on Cornice Ridge.

Doris and her students assessing blister rust damage on whitebark saplings in one of the vegetation plots.
Students setting up a plot and assessing vegetation cover using a line intercept method. 
Don't do this unless you work for Parks! Here's an old unexploded avalanche bomb. First one I've come across in many years of vegetation monitoring in that area. 
IEP class of 2013/14!