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Today, October 16th, 2016 was officially the last day of our lake monitoring project that has been underway over the last twelve weeks. I personally feel very fortunate to have been able to be a part of this project over the summer, which has been funded by the Vancouver Island University Research and Awards committee. 

Rapid Opioid Identification and Quantitation by Paper Spray Mass Spectrometry (PS-MS)

During the weekend of September 9th-11th MABRRI student researchers, Ashley Van Acken, Kayla Harris and Ryan Frederickson, participated in a StreamKeepers Course facilitated by Michele Jones and the Mid Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society.  The course was designed to evaluate the health of fish bearing streams to ensure spawning salmon had an adequate ecosystem to lay their fry. During our course we learned about the various types of insect species that live in our streams.

On June 30th Nelson, Mike, Kayla and I met bright and early for our last day on the peaks of Mt. Arrowsmith. In the morning we met Kristina and Hans at the base of the logging road to launch the new temperature loggers . These new loggers would replace old temperature gauges and be buried within each main plot.  We reached site one at Shari's summit and quickly got to work locating the old temperature loggers within each plot. These were then removed and replaced with the newly launched gauges.

Today Nelson Lovestrom and myself ventured out to Cathedral Grove, which is located within MacMillan Provincial Park. Cathedral Grove is a well known old growth forest situated alongside Cameron Lake with majestic Douglas-fir and Western Red Cedar trees, some over 800 years old. Nelson and I explored both sections of Cathedral grove (both sides of the highway). I noticed on the upper section (furthest away from the lake) there were a larger amount of old growth Douglas-fir trees than there were Cedars, with an understory of Western Hemlock and Sword Fern.

Today the MABRRI research team loaded all of their gear in the VIU truck and headed north to Parksville B.C, in search of the Ermineskin wetland nature park. Ermineskin wetland is the first wetland that we have decided to recce in preparation for our wetland mapping project, which is a project initiated by MABRRI in collaboration with the Regional District of Nanaimo’s (RDN) Drinking Water and Watershed Protection Program (DWWP).

The MABRRI team (Graham, Sarah, Ryan, Nelson, Mike, Kayla, and Amanda) recently participated in a BCLSS LakeKeepers Course, which was hosted by MABRRI here on campus. This 2-day course consisted of a variety of topics that covered lake ecology, limnology 101, how to organize a stewardship group, watershed assessment as well as lake monitoring techniques. The instructor, Rick Nordin, was a very knowledgeable LakeKeeper who was able to teach the class the ins and outs of how to take responsibility and get involved with research and restoration of our lakes.

A group of dedicated MABRRI students set up and manned a MABR display as part of the RDN's first Water Day event in Nanaimo. This was a fun family-friendly event in which several organizations came together to share information and experiences about one of our most precious resources - water. Some of the highlights for our students were seeing the other displays, taking home Douglas Fir seedlings to plant (courtesy of our table neighbour Island Timberlands/Timberwest), and running the Glacier Station for the Amazing Journey of a Water Droplet kid's activity.