Students who wrote deferred final exams in April, because they were sick for the regular final exams, are asking me where their grades are.. 😳 sorry! The fact is, that with a much recovered back -- I do pilates exercises every day -- I'm able to have a normal field-work, and conference-attending, summer of 12-14 hour work days […]
Field Work
#WinterTerm2016 is a wrap: some of what went down
It's Friday of Week 13, and next Monday is the last day of classes, before final exams begin, next Wednesday. York University's Winter Term 2016 began earlier than any other Ontario university, so, we finish early, too. Here are some Plant Ecology students today, weary, yet still smiling (ok, I asked them to smile), from left […]
Restoring the globally rare black oak savanna ecosystem in High Park Toronto
UK Academics aren't supposed to work over 37 hours per week. Seriously
UPDATE: This is my 15 January 2016 post, which is finally going live on 7 February 2016. This Winter Term has been much more hectic that Fall Term 2015, because I'm teaching 2 four-credit biology courses: BIOL 2010.40 (Plant Biology) and BIOL 3290.40 (Plant Ecology). Each course has 3 lecture hours a week, and between 1 to 6x3 hour labs, […]
#AdventBotany and Alien Abductions 😉
Applying Adaptive Management thinking to my boring back injury
Adaptive management is a term coined by Holling (1978) to describe a process for moving forward on some kind of natural resource management issue, e.g. fisheries, where the best form of action isn't totally clear. The basic idea is to do an experiment, where one of the treatments is a particular proposed management action for the ecosystem, then to track the response, and then, […]
Getting back to field work at #BioBlitz2015 in the Don River Watershed
I took up field work for the 2nd time this season at the Ontario Bioblitz flagship event on the Don Watershed. The Ontario Science Centre was the HQ. I was joined by Vithuja Vijayakanthan, one of my remaining 2 graduate students from my IRIS director days. Her research, looks at the inherent tensions between the Bioblitz as a research vehicle, and […]
When injury slows down fieldwork & life (updated 25 July)
UPDATED 25 July 2015. It's been 7 weeks since I originally posted this blog. In the interim, it's been a case of 2 steps forward, one step back. I've acquired a file with the York University Human Resources Health, Safety and a personal trainer. I've also been back to my family doctor (the umbrella/gatekeeper for institutional reporting on […]
