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 […]

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, […]

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 […]