So much info goes by us every day… some Stuff I want to tag
A ‘Wildlife-First’ Floating Park
Chicago’s Wild Mile floating native plant greenspace filters and cleans river water while offering habitat for pollinators, turtles, birds and more! This park takes a wildlife-first approach to public greenspace.
Imagine that! Wildlife First!
Read about this exciting project here:
https://wildmile.org/what
‘Gold mine’ of century-old wheat varieties could help breeders restore long lost traits
Historic traits could make modern wheat more resilient to disease and other stressors
17 JUN. 20243:20 P.M. ETBYERIK STOKSTAD In science.org
How technology can help us appreciate and understand nature
Suzane Rent in Morning File (Halifax Examiner) Jun 12, 2024
- iNaturalist: take and upload a photo of a species you’ve found and chat and learn about it with other users
- PlantNet: ID plants by uploading a photo. There’s a section specifically for plants in Eastern Canada
- LeafSnap: Identify plants by their leaves
- SeagrassSpotter: ID seagrass but also used as a way to conserve seagrass
- AnimalTracker: document your wild animal observations and share them with the scientific community.
How to have a happy and healthy gut
CBC Aired: June 3, 2024. “We look at the science of gut health as part of our series Well Founded, and learn about the gut microbiome’s important role in your overall physical and mental well-being.”
From student to author to hospital volunteer, this N.S. teen is making waves from China
Cassidy Chisholm · CBC News · Posted: Jun 03, 2024 “Ahnaleigh Simmonds, 15, was born in Halifax, but has spent most of her life in Shanghai. The 15-year-old African Nova Scotian was born with a life-threatening condition that has since pushed her to study medicine to one day help kids like her…Her hard work even got her featured on the Wall of Love, a bulletin board that highlights volunteers inside Jiahui International Hospital. Simmonds was also featured in an online article posted by Jiahui Health…uring the pandemic, she actually co-wrote and published a book called I’m From Nova Scotia: Exploring My Black Heritage, with her grandmother, Andrea Marsman.
Shark watchers off Nova Scotia are going to need a bigger boat
CBC News May 31, 2024. “Great white sharks are on the move in Nova Scotia waters in what appear to be greater numbers. CBC’s Tom Murphy explores what’s driving the apex predators north and finds an eco-tourism industry keen on better understanding the endangered species.” Warming waters. Seal Buffet, Citizen Science, Canada’s only shark cage.
– A growing city needs to grow everywhere’: Young people speak about ways Halifax’s housing crisis affects them
Hfx Examiner May 23, 2024
Kate MacQuarrie’s PEI Untamed
– Woodpecker Sign
– Frog Song
– The Myth of No Mow May
May 3, 2024
“No Mow May” is a good start to rethinking bee health across our lawns Dal insect scientist recommends three other ways to help By Lauren Phillips, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Read more at: https://www.thecoast.ca/news-opinion/no-mow-may-is-a-good-start-to-rethinking-bee-health-across-our-lawns-32793031 My Comment: Kate MacQuarrie offers a somewhat diff. perspective in a blog post The Myth of No Mow May https://www.pei-untamed.com/post/the-myth-…. I posted this comment: I have tried No Mow May, ‘found it in serious conflict with my “clover-lawn” regime, as it is good to mow (I use a manual mower) in May especially to encourage wild white clover, or to establish Dutch white clover by over-seeding. Then you have lots of clover flowers later on (as well as a natural source of nitrogen) and the clover masks weeds, making a nice blend, which indeed can include dandelion and other flowering weeds. Then when the clover starts flowering and a lot of it is pollinated, mowing stimulates more flowers… I do keep some patches of un-mowed dandelion here and there also. Some info on clover in lawns here: https://versicolor.ca/lawnsoldsite/secC4.h…
–A new tool in our toolbox for buckthorn control: Critical period cutting
By Laura Domyancich-Lee August 18, 2023 for fmr.prg. “In 2021, we were able to hire a contractor to scale up and refine that approach of buckthorn removal and try “critical period cutting” — an innovative technique that uses what we know about buckthorn growth to eliminate any need for herbicide use.”
– On Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe in Nova Scotia
On nsforestnotes.ca Mar 30, 2022 Retired DNR pest and GIS specialist Bob Guscott has had an “obsession” with Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe for many years. He recently shared his wealth of knowledge about this early flowering Nova Scotia plant in a presentation to the Nova Scotia Wild Flora Society, available now as a YouTube Video….
–Everything you need to know about HRM council’s Nov. 28 meeting
The Coast Nov 30, 2023…Budget Committee…Jerry Blackwood, the city’s chief financial officer, oversees the municipal budget. It guides city spending, which will be about $1 billion next fiscal year when all’s said and done…In our current fiscal year—April 1, 2023 through March 31, 2024—the city is projected to run a deficit of $8 million…In a lot of ways the city is not financially sustainable…The city is not financially sustainable because our development choices and transportation choices have been objectively the wrong ones for about 70 years, give or take a few.
– Net Zero Advisory Body (Canada)
The concept of the perilimnion
Ogden, James Gordon, Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, 36(3/4), 137-141.”Seasonal variations in surface and ground water supply and increasing attention to ionic and mass balances in aquatic eco-systems require more specific definitions of hydrologic parameters to recognize sources and sinks for biologically significant geochemistry. The term “Perilimnion” is proposed to define that zone of the catchment in which groundwater developed by surface runoff and percolation may enter (or leave) the limnic environment. The perilimnion, therefore, is an aquifer, whose geochemistry may affect, or be affected by, the waters of a lake. The term “Tardelimnion” is proposed to define that portion of the limnicenvironment in which deposition of limnogenic sediments (autochthonous or allochthonous) contribute to an aquitard, whose low coefficient of hydraulic permeability (<10-6 cm-1) virtually precludes significant hydrologic or geochemical interaction between lake and ground waters.”
On Forest Thinning/self thinning etc
Stump sprout formation by red maple (Acer rubrum L.) in Nova Scotia
Prager, U.E. & Goldsmith, F.B. (1978). In Nova Scotia. Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, 28(1/2), 93-99. p98, conclusions for management, growing tallest trees, biggest trees, feed for deer. Self thinning.
Related: Stump sprouting of four northern hardwoods
Solomon, Dale S., and Barton M. Blum. in Vol. 59. Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, 1967.
Yellow Birch, Paper Birch, Sugar Maple, Beech. Red Maple most prolific. Spouts as a function of stump size etc.
Toward managing mixed-species stands: from parametrization to prescription<
Pretzsch and Zenner Forest Ecosystems (2017) 4:19 “A better understanding and a more quantitative design of mixed-species stands will contribute to more integrative and goal-oriented research in mixed-species forests…”
The long-term branching and diameter response of pre-commercially thinned hardwood stands in Nova Scotia
Jane Nicholson et al. 2010. NS Gov Doc
Self-thinning
The principle of self-thinning is most easily described by the temporal changes that occur in the numbers of trees in undisturbed even-aged stands. However, self-thinning also occurs in uneven-aged stands. According to this principle, the finite growing space of a stand is occupied by progressively fewer trees as average tree size increases with stand age.
Trees at a competitive disadvantage die from crowding and suppression as stands approach a limiting number of trees of a given average size that can coexist within an area. As stands reach the stem exclusion stage of development (Chapter 5), tree crowns expand to fill the available growing space. Crown expansion continues until an upper limit of tree crowding is reached. Thereafter, stands follow a relatively predictable course of density-dependent tree mortality as numbers of trees per unit area decrease with increasing average tree size. It is generally assumed that the combined effects of crown expansion and tree mortality are compensatory so that canopy closure is always maintained except in the presence of ‘irregular’ mortality. The latter may be caused by such factors as air pollution, high winds, flooding, epidemic insect and disease outbreaks, and other factors.
A global synthesis on the effects of thinning on hydrological processes: Implications for forest management
Antonio D. del Campo et al., 2022.
The silver bullet that wasn’t: Rapid agronomic weed adaptations to glyphosate in North America
Christopher Landau et al., 2023 PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2023, pgad338,
Parents prohibited from watching Halifax youth basketball games after poor behaviour
Jonathan MacInnis
CTV News Atlantic Reporter dec 14, 2023
Automata: The Extraordinary “Robots” Designed Hundreds Of Years Ago
On Youtube, under Timeline – World History Documentaries
ocumentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata – extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life. The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today. Thx CCF!!!!
The Current with Matt Galloway on Solitude
We talk to Heather Hansen, co-author of Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, about what can be gained from finding positivity in solitude.
Poor Boy’s Game
Poor Boy’s Game is a 2007 Canadian drama film directed by Clement Virgo. Co-written with Nova Scotian writer/director Chaz Thorne (Just Buried), it is the story of class struggle, racial tensions, and boxing, set in the Canadian east coast port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The film premiered on February 11, 2007, at the Berlin International Film Festival. The movie stars Danny Glover, Rossif Sutherland, Greg Bryk, Flex Alexander and Laura Regan.