BC Rivers Day & an all-wet survey

It always amazes me how quickly the days go by. It's already almost been two weeks since I last posted, and so much has happened in that time.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at a park in Langley, taking part in a BC Rivers Day Community Festival. This festival has been going for years, and it's composed of tons of booths for different organizations as well as lots of activities for kids. The theme, of course, is rivers, although it has expanded over the years to include other "eco-friendly" organizations. For a number of years, Chris Hall (my colleague and office-partner) has had a booth at this festival where he sets up microscopes, collects water from the stream running through the park, and has the kids explore the world of stream invertebrates. This has been quite successfull and it would be safe to say that TWU now has one of the largest booths at the festival. Last year, I joined Chris and we expanded the booth to include information on A Rocha. This year we did the joint booth again, and the weather made the event a huge success! It was a gloriously warm and sunny September day, and the kids absolutely loved the microscopes - for many, it's the first time they've used one. No pictures to post though, as I forgot my camera at home. :(

Last week, Glen and I went out and began conducting an overview environmental inventory of the 57 acres across from TWU. I've never done this before, but Glen has been involved in several that A Rocha Canada has done for other landowners so he was showing me the ropes. Basically, we identified about 5 different "ecounits" which are areas distinctly different from each other based on landscape characteristics. For example, this property has a riparian unit along Guy Creek (a tributary of the Salmon River); a field/pasture unit where the old farmhouse is located; a small piece of mixed forest (deciduous & coniferous trees); a lowland, mainly deciduous forest unit; and an upland deciduous forest unit. These units are usually initially defined by looking at an aerial photo of the area. Then we go out into the field and walk through each unit, making notes of the plant species we see, as well as any wildlife or other unique aspects. We also note what plant species are dominant. We got through about 3 and a half of the units before calling it quits because of the rain. We were outside from about 9:00 to 2:30, with a short break for a meeting over lunch. I discovered that my raingear is only waterproof for a few hours, and after 5 hours of being in the rain the water begins to soak through. :) We're hoping to find a drier day to complete the survey. Now I'm starting to go through the data, pulling it into a report.

Now it's prepping for being out of the office for a week, a Geography lab tomorrow afternoon, and then off to Winnipeg on Wednesday!!