Reclamation in Waterton National Park
On October 13-15 I got to participate in a reclamation project of my profressor's. She invited students from her capstone class for the Land Reclamation major (my second major IP) to volunteer for the weekend on a reclamation project for an old dump site in Waterton National Park. I jumped at the opportunity (of course) and signed up. Everything was paid for, but we worked long hard hours in exchange. 14 students volunteered and we had a great time.
Parks Canada has a new mandate to clean up any and all contaminated sites in National Parks. This site is a research project as well as a clean-up job. The garbage in the dump was excavated, the hole was filled back in, top soil was laid down, and the site was recontoured to emulate the surrounding topography. Our job as slave laborers was to plant the site with native plants that have been growing in greenhouses in Yoho NP for the past 1-3 years.
There were about 20 species of plants that we used. The site was divided into a grid pattern and each square in the grid contained a certain mix and distribution (random vs clumped) of species. We had to put the correct number of each species (most of which were almost impossible to identify because they had already died back for the winter) in each square on the grid (there were 40+ squares), and we had to map out (by pacing approx. 1 meter steps) where we put all of the plants in each square. The grid and mapping were used to create a reference of approximate plant location for monitoring in the spring for plant survival. Once everything was laid out and mapped we planted everything. There were 100's of plants! It took 22 people 4 hours on Friday evening (after driving 8 hours to get there) and 10 hours on Saturday to get everything done.
Sunday morning was spent hiking and touring around Waterton before doing the 8 hour trip back to Edmonton.
I'll write more later on how this trip applies to my capstone class. It's very interesting stuff. It's a good thing it's so interesting because I've spent years and $1000's studying the thoery behind the practices so I can put it to work in my professional life, starting next spring.
Brenda and Leah Friday evening in Waterton National Park - brrr!
Starting to lay out the plants at 8 am on a slightly frosty Saturday morning
The crew late afternoon Saturday - all the yellow cones in the background are theplants that have been stuck into the ground!
Ingrid and Brenda - professional plant transporters via the grab and stuff method
what's this about?
Brenda
4 comments:
Wow Brenda! You lead such an interesting life! It looks like fun and you're learning at the same time. You can't get any better than that. Keep it up.
Love,
Grandma
Your chosen career is such a worthwhile thing to spend your time doing, Brenda. That's pretty dang impressive. Having to map out the meter squares and following instructions to place 100s of plants in specific configurations: sounds alot like what the crews who follow a landscape architect's planting plans have to do. Even the scale of your project is not out of the range of landscape architecture projects -- you probably know of some reclamation design teams with landscape architects on board. Anyway, I can totally relate to what you're doing. It's super interesting , thoughtful work even if you feel sorer in the muscles at the end of the day, than in the brain ...
I just have one other observation, heheh. You guys are pacing off meters with your strides. I do that, too, when I'm doing a rough survey on site-- I will often pace off the distance. Only thing is, MY stride is one yard. Funny how that works: must be Canadian strides are a wee bit longer than American strides??? to the tune of 1.093613298 longer. Wonder how that happened! ;-D
I've had to do a lot of "accurate estimating" with pacing, so I've had practice! It's easy when you know the distance is 10 meters, which is what each square on the grid was (10 x 10 m).
There were four of us in charge of the pacing and placing because we were the only ones with plant identification skills to be able to tell what was put where. Most of the plants were very difficult to id because they were brown, broken, dead, and very small stems with no leaves or anything else that was distinctive. Some of them we just had to guess by process of elimination.
I love that top photo, Brenda - what an amazing awesome place to work! You and your friend look happy.
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