Creek breach

The topic of water source protection brought us to the York Region in Newmarket today to listen to the South Georgian Bay Lake Simcoe Source Protection program. Here you see Brook talking to us about the creek in the Eastern Creek Naturalisation Project under the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.

To break down the complicated scenario here, we have urban development located on a floodplain that can potentially flood; a man-made pond introduced into the middle of a natural creek (that is unmanaged nor maintained); manicured lawns that perimeter the creek and pond that allow all rainwater to drain directly into the creek/pond without filtration; and water runoff from urban development (carparks and buildings surround the area).

This is how the creek looks like now, and the vegetation has grown back in part because of the efforts of the LSRCA. One of the main methods that have worked really well seemingly (it has only been a year since they’ve done it) is to place Willow and Red Osier Dogwood clippings into a fascine. Growth from the clippings then strengthen the soil and earth structure around the bank, and prevent erosion. 

This is the fascine visible from where I’m standing. You can also notice that the water is pretty clear, not very turbid or silty. The stream floods when heavy rains arrive, and when it floods the erosion isn’t too bad because of the fascines and because manicuring of the banks isn’t done anymore. Planting of vegetation that is able to tolerate water as well as salt (salt that comes from road salt used on the snow in winter to make roads more manageable) is planted, so not just any plant will do.

Fishes are present too! He didn’t mention too much about whether frogs and other animals were here though. Fish population doesn’t seem much affected by the management work done on the creek and ponds (largely because they took a very short time to work – in these situations working as fast as possible and staying in the river as short a time as possible is important).

Wood chips placed on the ground also help retain moisture for the plant as well as prevent the grasses from overcrowding the woody vegetation that they want growing there. Ingenious eh? (:

So with the naturalisation project things seem set to go well, and once they start creating the systems needed to treat water going from the pond into the creek that comes from urban runoff, we’ll really see how things work out. right now, oh man its pretty interesting to see bio-engineering at work!

alvar land

A trip to the Carden Alvar in the morning was overseen by the Couchiching Conservancy, where Kaira, our guide, first brought us around the alvars and told us what they were. Areas with very shallow soil over limestone rock, vegetation on this habitat is very specific and have special adaptations to deal with the drought and floods that come with the seasons, as well as the overall lack of rain/water.

Granite deposited when glaciers retreated resulted in a mix of granite and limestone rock in the area, and this particular alvar is an ecotone that supports many plant and animal species (especially birds like the Nighthawk and Bobolink, which are species at risk in Canada). Alvars have calcareous soil and are nutrient-poor, and this results in low competition: which then allows for more species to move in in a bid for space. Calcareous soil also is better for plants compared to acidic soil, so this type of habitat ends up having more biodiversity than ones with acidic soil.

So enough about the introduction of alvars, here it is:

alvar picture #1

Looks like man-made pavement? That’s exactly what I thought as I stepped into the area, walking from a graveled road to what I thought led to the most bio-diverse habitat in the temperate regions of this part of the world. lo and behold, it actually was limestone alvar that we were standing on, and one must remember that while the tropics are species diverse in every spot you look, temperate regions are different, and that’s still something to celebrate. I was still surprised though, but some of the rock in the area had fossils!

fossils in alvar rock

In one square metre of land the alvars contain as a habitat comparatively more species than any other habitat in the temperate countries, containing lichen, mosses, woody vegetation and grasses, which in turn provide a suitable system for many insects, grassland bird species to nest, as well as snakes and other predators.

alvar #2

You can see tall grasses and some woody vegetation here, and generally it looks like meadows and tall grasses. The alvars cannot support large trees (unless you leave succession to take over in many decades) easily, though Cedar tends to grow here. Even though this particular alvar is largely undisturbed, humans have already introduced a couple of invasive species into the area.

To give you a bit more information about the Couchiching Conservancy, they work like the Nature Conservancy in that they buy land (though funds from the federal and provincial government, as well as through donations/fundraising efforts) and then work on conservation through that. On top of that, the CC also works together with private landowners on managing their land effectively and in an environmentally friendly manner.

Saxifraga virginiana [flower]

I could hear the distinct sound of crunching and crackling as I walked around the dry habitat, and looking down, one could see many plants amongst the twigs and dry grass. There is lichen (white in colour) at the top of this picture, moss in a dark green colour all around, and in the centre stands a succulent plant that is an indicator of alvars, and is also an arctic disjunct species that breaks up stone as they grow, and retain moisture in their succulent state. Click on flower to see photos of their flowers.

clumping effect – caespitose

Plants in water deficient areas also tend to have an adaptation to ‘clump’ at the base to absorb and retain more moisture, and this can be seen in a number of plants in the area. Plants that have this ability are called caespitose plants. Pretty cool eh!

Skullcap

Kaira also talked about indicators of alvar habitats, and these plants include the Skullcap (above) and the Field Chickweed (below). Plants have what is known now as an ‘alvar association’ rank in percentage, and this tells you how much it is dependent on alvars for survival. Plants like Fragrant Sumac and Bee Balm however, can live on alvars (though its tough to do so because of harsh conditions) but do not NEED to live on them. On the far extreme edge of the coin then also presents you with North Honeysuckle and Grey Dogweed that are unwanted species.

Field Chickweed

Butternut

Thoughout our walk through the alvar landscape, Kaira told us about how different plant species were at different levels of endangerment – special concern, threatened, endangered, expatriated, extinct – and giving us examples for some of them. One of them is the Butternut tree, seen above, whose attack by an invasive fungus brought in by numerous vectors (insects, water/wind) was bringing down its numbers and making it almost a matter of time before it would die out. Sad! [comparable to dutch elm disease]

The other example she gave us was about the Red Mulberry, whose situation of limited numbers was brought about both by the introduction of a invasive introduced virus as well as hybridisation with the White Mulberry, of which hybrids are no longer Red Mulberries (which is how they are reducing their numbers).

And here we see two frogs! Not sure what species they are, but this made us recall the various frog sounds Mary taught us the day before (see entry: fields) at Dufferin Marsh.

It was cool to see the alvars and get educated by them – I had never before heard of the term even before this!

So, two concepts for you:

1. The main threat to the alvars now are the lack of natural disturbances. Knowing that grazing and nature fires used to be present but are now gone (as a result of human intervention), the woody vegetation is not being pushed back anymore, and these threaten to take over the alvar area (which is essentially open grassland) and through succession create an entire forest where alvar once was.

Without natural small fires also means that tinder would have built up over the years and if a fire comes one day it would burn hotter and consume more land – eventually resulting in what happened to some other forests that suppressed fires: nearly two feet of burnt soil, barren land, seeds that would not generate because they died due to the too-hot-fires. Extreme, but very possible.

This would mean alvar habitat would be lost and species that depend on alvar habitats are gone – and the most bio-diverse area in the temperate regions are also lost. So now what would one do? Introduce grazers? Carry out prescribed, control fires?

2. When do you know if it is worthwhile to protect an area/species? Do you necessarily have to choose areas to ‘sacrifice’ or ‘keep’? If an area is too small, or a species population is too small to sustain itself, would you invest money to sustain it by hand? What about fragmented areas – if, like the Dufferin Marsh, you know that the marsh was surrounded by urban sprawl and you know that it could not be expanded – is it worth putting in effort to sustain it?

Operations

It’s been a couple of months since I last updated, and I’ll be sending in some entries on the field trips that we did in Toronto for the first part of school, in our summer course (Ecology in Human Dominated Environments).

Those of you from the tropics reading these posts, think about what kind of differences the systems you see in temperate regions have that set them apart from the tropical rainforests as you know it. What are the conditions that temperate species deal with that tropical ones don’t? Are the systems that different after all? What kind of underlying concepts apply to both tropical and temperate?

On a side note, there’s a new interest I have in a project. Operation Wallacea, a collection of scientific expeditions (as modern as you can expect expeditions in this day and age to be), conducts training courses as well as opens itself for research assistance in various countries with Indonesia being it’s first and flagship site, and Madagascar being its newest. Other countries include: Egypt, Peru, Cuba, Mozambique, etc.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be trekking through the jungle, carrying out surveys for rare amphibians and reptiles? Imagine yourself sitting in the boat, looking through the river for caimans and river dolphins for a project. What about identifying birds through calls, or stumbling upon a pride of lions in the savannah, and knowing exactly what to do not to piss them off?

Check the site out. It’s expensive, but it certainly sounds worth it.

Fields in Toronto

So you know I’m at Toronto studying the environment and its systems, as well as doing a bit of anthropology and economics studies on the side. We did a summer field course before officially starting the school year, and the following will be some posts on the field trips we had and issues we covered.

The course was held at Koffler’s Scientific Reserve at Joker’s Hill, a 348 ha reserve that contains the largest site of old growth forest found in the whole of Oak Ridges Moraine. It is owned by the University of Toronto, and also recognised as both an Earth Science and Life Science Area of Natural Scientific Interest – a designation that acknowledges the exceptional quality of the forest at Joker’s Hill.

In the first week we did projects (small group projects on a topic we choose from a list of given topics, and a large group project analysing a dataset together). The second week however, was full of field trips and discussions. We went to Dufferin Marsh Conservation Area with Mary Asselstine leading the lecture about issues and concerns of the DMCA and troubles she has had to deal with.

AND WE GOT TO SIT ON A MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!! (:

Just about half and hour’s ride from KSR, DMCA is an area almost completely surrounded by residential and commercial development, the 5 ha plot of marsh/swamp land has had to deal with un-cooperative developers and municipals alongside handling and involving the community in conservation and action.

Something I always brought back from class with Prof Peter Ng and Sivasothi was to ‘choose your battles’ carefully (in conservation class), and now it was reiterated here by Mary. With all the problems that have surfaced and all the problems dealing with these problems, hearing about them continuously from Mary for a few hours would just make you either cry or shake your head in disbelief and frustration. Here’s a short list:

With too many agencies employing regulations on one area with no clear jurisdiction, it takes a long, long time (and many tiring communications) to do one thing. It is inefficient, ineffective, and it does not help the community in both humans and animals/plants.

And then there’s the problem of invasives: on one hand you have the Purple Loose Strife (a wetland invasive from europe), and on the other you have hybrid Cattails that are rampaging all over the wetland, causing problems with water flow and nutrient trapping. but wait, the story’s not over, because you also have the Phragmitis (Reed) from europe taking over wetland edges and growing extra fast.

Sometimes action plans work. Mary spoke about how she would have a dedicated team of volunteers from the Village of Schomberg who would gather every other year to clear out the Purple Loose Strife, and who have the ability to because they are trained (by Mary’s team). Successful storm water management ponds built also successfully treated urban runoff and kept out the geese (by sheer mechanical imagination: ropes built across the pond kept the geese from flying in).

But even with all these successes, there  are things to note: animals that live in habitats that require more than one area (e.g. treefrogs need the forest AND the pond to live and breed in); pests that come with urban development (rats, raccoons, feral cats) prey off smaller animals in the communities that are not used to having them around; how do you get the municipals and township on your side; how do you involve the community, and, is it significant to conserve a 5 ha area – or would it just end up as a biological city? The bottom line is, is it worth it?

Trees are dying because of raised water levels that are a result of so many factors, and solutions are stopped dead in their tracks because of regulations placed by agencies that do not claim to then have jurisdiction over the area – but if you do something against regulation you will get prosecuted – what can be done, really? It’s such a tough fight, and it reminds me of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in Singapore so much.

It was really inspiring to hear of Mary’s fight (continued, fight) to carry on, and I hope people out there somewhere continue as well. You never know who you touch out there, a child in the crowd, that may become the next mayor, political activist, politician, engineer, who may then have the capability of influencing the environment effectively and in a positive way.

It’s a long road ahead, and a hard fight. keep going, activists.

After months and months,

Finally a post!

I’m sorry to have been gone for so long, but this is what I have been up to:

May to Bali for a few days on holiday.

 

June to July 7 weeks travelling the road and seas in Borneo (Sabah & Sarawak) in Harvard Summer School’s Biodiversity of Borneo field course. Check out my homepage here.

August to present in Toronto, Ontario, Canada having classes in Environmental Biology.

So it’s been really hectic preparing for everything, and also doing projects on the side, taking classes and hiking as well. I’ve actually set up a travelblog now at minstreet.wordpress.com (or click here) and you are most welcome to visit the site if you want. (: Mostly it consists of posts about Toronto now, but in between when I have the time I will update on Borneo’s adventures and pictures too. Have been using Windows Live Writer that NWQ recommended, and I must say this (to give credit to them) because it HAS made writing to different blogs so much easier now.

Take care, and wait for my update. It’ll come. (:

Meanwhile, keep thinking, questioning, challenging, and proposing. (:

Backyard Biology: Field Trip to MMM

Okays, a post that was due a long time ago! Figured you guys wanted some pictorials by now. :D

“Yes, against the better judgement of all the rainy days in this current season (it was february then!), we went to Mandai Mangroves and Mudflats* (MMM). So it rained and it poured cats dogs monkeys and elephants (and for Kim, giraffes too). Still though, we had a fabulous time (: (or at least, I know I did!)

High tide water line can be seen on the propped roots of the Rhizophora, and a solitary seedling amongst the rest of the mangrove trees.

MMM littered. May not look as bad here, but it was really quite a load from where we were looking from. Big trash, small trash, all trash. This is where I’d talk about the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC), which is held annually, and all over the world!

And yes, Singapore has it too! Just do a simple internet search and you should be able to find information on it. Institutions and the public join and gather forces, moving to coastal and mangrove areas to do a clean up and weigh-in on the types and amount of trash collected – e.g. 43 tonnes at XYZ Beach, with 36,453 straws, etc.

Great stuff to do it, a big eye opener and again, awareness that hits people when they go ‘oh my, i didn’t know this much rubbish floated out here!’. Grace and I joined Siva one year and we did it at Pandan Mangroves. The year before that I was at Sungei Buloh. Both very different sites to work at, with different litter and characteristics.

Sometimes, TV sets and refrigerator frames are found as well! Tyres are common too, and more dangerously, hyperdermic needles and rusty nails too. Gunny sacks, PVC piping, all sorts of rubbish you can imagine!

Horseshoe crabs (HSCs) getting caught under fishing nets and lines, being unable to reach food for sustanance and water to keep its book gills moist for breathing, it died! Decomposing smell wafting up. :(

Rescue mission got underway with people snipping off abominable abandoned nets and lines and releasing some still-alive HSCs – yay!

With Malaysia opposite us, wading migratory birds way out in front of us, mud on us, us beside us, and static electricity making our hair stand as we walked around, it was really quite an experience!

Lessons:
1. Always wear booties, coz Wincent didn’t get to wade out
as far as we the booties people could, quite a waste!
2. Wear fitting longs – Anne’s longs were loose and the mud was
constantly sucking it down. Haha. Needless to say, not a nice experience.

Our brave team happily muddied, headed along Sungei Mandai Kechil.

Daniel exploring the river bank at top left, Wincent smiling to himself at top right, Grace mischievously taking a photo of unsuspecting Kim at bottom.

More pictures of what it was like.  Siva’s in the orange cap,
Anne in the black shirt, Holly at bottom right picture.

Lessons:
3. Bring a proper poncho – not a groundsheet. Kim only realised her ‘poncho’
was actually a groundsheet when it started to rain, buggers.
4. Bring a poncho. Daniel didn’t have a poncho so used a garbage bag to cover
himself at first, and when that failed, he used it to cover his bag.

Wasp, Sea Holly, Two Collared Kingfishers, Peanut Worm, Onchs, Sandpiper. Look for the bird! Tip: 2pm direction if centre of photo is centre of clock.

Creatures! :D HSCs, mudcrabs, thundercrabs, all sorts of plants.

Seedling’s been barnacled!

Huge trees keeled over because of ground/mud erosion that’s happening more and more nowadays, what with the increase in wave energy resulting from increased activity along the shoreline, as well as damming of rivers preventing sediment flow into estuaries for deposition. That’s Evelyn delicately walking past the tree.

Photo of desolate-looking, dying mangrove trees at low tide.

(:

Almost the core team of Backyard Biology, we’ll be having another field trip soon! This time to Tanah Merah side, where we’ll be exploring the area for the first time. Oh, and Daniel’s back in Toronto now I believe. Evelyn and I will be visiting him very soon when we leave for environmental biology studies at University of Toronto!”

*Don’t know about MMM? See an earlier post on 19th Feb. (:

To save animals, put a price on them

I know, I know. Many weeks have passed since the last post, and its mostly due to converting all of my time to studying, researching or re-activating my social life now and then with friends.

So here’s a quick one.

To save animals, put a price on them – its an article on a radical idea, which is actually so crazy its the kind of idea that gets people (especially me) thinking and puts my mind out of the box so I can actually think radically too. Read it here. I love this kind of stuff. Not that I agree with the idea, I think there’s some serious flaws with it, but I like that the idea makes me think. Hope it does for you too.

Having taken classes on Tropical Conservation, many issues have also been brought up with regards to conservation. Just a quick post on certain concepts and ideas off the top of my head that have to be kept in mind when we are talking about conservation and leading lives with conservation at our core.

There is an article called “When swordfish conservationists eat swordfish“. It’s a good read. You might be able to get it by googling.

So the general idea is when a conservationist doesn’t practice what he preaches, and doesn’t do what he advocates – its like an environmental activist who pollutes the earth and doesn’t bother to save water or electricity. Think about your footprint – calculate it with an online calculator. Think about your lifestyle, and if and how that is aligned with what you believe in.

Next.

That conservation is not a pure subject, like many other things in the world. Pure meaning it only consists of one category of subject, of course. Call it science, call it social science, call it environmental or even philosophy related. It is all of, and much more than these things.

Keep in mind that conservation, without a social, environmental, political component, cannot work.

It’s interesting. People have to have their basic needs taken care of before they can move on to other things. It’s Maslow’s pyramid, period. Culture, environmental activists, choices even, only come when we have our basic necessities met.

So don’t question humanity’s selfishness in wanting to secure our future first – the thing you should question is why we think that economics should be mutually exclusive with the environment? We are slowly being proven wrong on that one, and that is, I believe, the way to go.

Después.

Zoos are temporary. They are not an alternate habitat, they are conservation centres, and Noah’s Arks at best. Look, no one’s disputing that they are great for education here. They are fantastic tools – but that’s all they are. A tool, a mechanism for education and awareness, but never, ever a replacement for what belongs in our natural environment, for what has been there before we removed them from it with our influence.

Nächster.

Cryo banks and seed banks, where sperm and egg of animals and seeds of plants are stored to ’secure’ its future are great ideas. But like zoos, its dangerous if we think they’re going to be our future. They can’t be.

Think: if animals cannot mate naturally any more, and we have to do fertilisation for them, is that natural? If an animal’s habitat is no longer around, and cannot be resurrected, so what if we can artificially produce more of these animals?

Berikutnya.

Beware of crunching numbers. Telling the public that we have 100 hectares (ha) of land designated for nature is only meaningful if that land is not fragmented. If they are taking 100 patches of 1 ha land ‘polka-dots’ and adding them together to produce 100 ha of land, that’s not meaningful at all.

It’s blips of land that not only reduce the integrity of the land, it also brings in accessibility by humans which can mean poaching, besides having the famous edge effect that alters conditions of the fragment such that environment of the fragment starts to degrade.

Made small enough, don’t be surprised if it degrades to nothingness. All while we say we have 100 ha of land set aside of nature.

其次.

Again, like how conservation is a weaving of many subjects and many characters, the change in food chains/webs, ecosystems and environment is compounded.

Think about what animal/plant is affected. How its life history is changed. Does it migrate? What breeding pattern does it have? What does it eat, and what does it get eaten by?

For example. Parasites have primary, and secondary hosts. Bacteria, they’re bad or good in our eyes, just harmful or not to the animal. Migratory birds and fishes, and their prey, be it crustaceans or caterpillars. Climate changes and pollution affecting breeding times, seasons, development – mozzies breed faster or slower, some frogs and molluscs are starting to have pseudo penises and weird number of limbs and development.

Lastly.

Though I’m not done talking about it, I’ll continue another day. Don’t let all of this frighten you into a state of inertia and shock.

Instead, take this as a sign, a challenge for us, the current generation to rise up to and take action. What’s most important, is that we take action. We can sit on our butts the whole day and talk all about the climate change and how animals are dying around the world – but without action, nothing really will get done.

Start simple. Use less things. Then you need to reuse less of them, and recycle even less of them. So start with reducing.

Spread. Blog. Talk to people. Write to your MP, if you’re in Singapore, and your mayor or city council if you’re elsewhere. Highlight issues you think are pertinent, important.

Learn more about whatever it is YOU are interested in. You don’t have to be interested in the environment just because everyone else is – go find out about what’s interesting to you. Knowing about the environment is good – learning about something you have  a passion for, is sustainable. Mebbe you like amphibians. I met a 13 year old girl today who likes rodents, and learnt only today that squirrels, beavers and capibara, saying ‘Cooool’ as she heard it.

We have a choice. Always. And putting yourself in the seat of choice and responsibility means you have power – it means you are the driver, and you decide today, right now, where we go.

Your actions affect someone and something else. You are powerful. You choose. Believe that, and do something good with it.

The world will be better off. (:

Interesting articles

Check these out:

Florida Biologists use Magnets to keep nuisance crocodiles away

If something is difficult, most people believe it must be important to achieving goals

Birds’ movements reveal climate change in action

Mystery of deep-sea fish with tubular eyes and transparent head solved

Fossilised pregnant fish one of first animals to have sex

Shocking photographs expose Florida’s decline in its reef fish

Haha. That said, remind me to cover something about Science and its hypotheses. (: Enjoy!

Life as a Sanctioned Professional Killer

A few updates on interesting talks by Professor Peter Ng at this year’s NUS Arts Festival. Appealing to all sorts of faculty students and the public, these talks cover a wide range of issues including an non-exhaustive list of moral, social, environmental issues with local, regional and global consequences. Good stuff.

Life as a Sanctioned Professional Killer by Prof Peter KL Ng
LT 31 NUS Faculty of Science
07 Mar 09 (4pm)
Free Admission
220 pax

In conjunction with The Extinction Room. Prof Peter KL Ng, Director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, has in recent years become deeply involved in environmental and conservation biology. In the field of biodiversity science, the killing and preservation of animal specimens for research is an integral part of the discipline. If a biologist’s desire is to conserve – how should this need to kill be rationalized? In a wide ranging talk, these seemingly conflicting aspects will be discussed and hopefully parsimonised.

Admission is free and there are still seats available (: Sign up here.

A list of other events and talks held at the NUS Arts Festival are also found here (use this link to sign up for them as well).

How to get there:
Take SBS Bus 95 from Buona Vista MRT station.
Drop off at the second stop after the bus turns in to NUH/NUS.
See map.

BIOGRAPHY – Prof Peter Ng worked on his PhD at the National University of Singapore part-time while still an education officer with the Ministry of Education in the 1980s. He joined the then Department of Zoology in 1990, and has been involved in biodiversity and systematics research, primarily with crabs and fish over the last 17 years. Recognised as a international taxonomic expert on these groups, he also works on a wide variety of different biodiversity issues and has become deeply involved in  environmental and conservation biology. He is on the editorial board of over a dozen international journals, as well as being a member of  numerous international biological organizations, notably the international  Commission for Zoological Nomenclature. He is now director of both the  Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research and the Tropical Marine Science  Institute at NUS.

Nature, Man Included

A short update, courtesy of Luan Keng, on a photography exhibition that you might want to drop by to have a look at.

When? 27th Feb to 26th April 2009
Where? NUS Museum, University Cultural Centre

Alternatively, wait for it to come closer to your faculty if you are in NUS:

When? 19th May – 2nd June 2009
Where? Arts Buzz, NUS Central Library

Reflections on the role of Man in nature through a medium of photography, explorations of the intricate relationships between self, community and nature, including a dynamic play of political, socio-cultural and environmental conditions will be showcased in this exhibition.

Boundaries separating the urban and the developed, whether present or undiscovered will also be explored.