Soil Bioengineering Course

April 29-30, 2008

Hillcrest Hotel, Revelstoke BC

CMI Annual Researchers' Meeting 2008

CMI Annual General Meeting

May 1, 2008

United Church Hall, 314 Mackenzie Avenue, Revelstoke BC

Every year CMI members get together to provide updates on their projects (ecological research, field trials, show & tell about new initiatives in southeastern British Columbia) and catch up on each other’s news. It’s an informal atmosphere and non-CMI members are welcome. Presentations will be on Thursday, May 1 with a special session on riparian values, songbirds, and species at risk sponsored by the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program. Our short Annual General Meeting will be held right after lunch.

Agenda and Abstracts

An agenda appears further down this page.

Abstracts appear below the agenda.

We have a full slate of presenters. You are welcome to bring along a poster or display about your project.

Registration & costs

Click here to register for the meeting. We have a cancellation policy; see the registration form.

Members are welcome to attend the Annual General Meeting portion of the day (after lunch) at no charge.

Your registration fee includes lunch and two coffee breaks with goodies.

*Ask about a group rate for a class of students.

Location of meeting
The meeting will be held in the church hall of the Revelstoke United Church, 314 Mackenzie Avenue. This is in downtown Revelstoke. Use the Mackenzie Avenue entrance. For a map of Revelstoke, visit the following web site: www.cityofrevelstoke.com/map/map-start.htm .

Where to stay

For information on  accommodations in Revelstoke, visit the Chamber of Commerce web site at: www.seerevelstoke.com/vacation . We have not booked rooms at a particular hotel, as we expect quite a few of you will not be staying overnight. If you are coming with a group, please call Jackie Morris at 250-837-9311 and perhaps something can be arranged.

Getting to Revelstoke
Revelstoke is on the Trans Canada Highway, approximately 5 hours driving time west of Calgary, Alberta; 3 hours east of Kamloops BC; and 2.5 hours north of Kelowna BC. The nearest major airport is Kelowna. Revelstoke is serviced by the Greyhound bus line. The bus depot is a pleasant 20 minute walk from downtown.
 

Agenda

Abstracts

Managing Species at Risk in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks
Alice Weber and Jen Theberge, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks

Alice Weber and Jen Theberge from Parks Canada will be giving a presentation on the listing of species in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks that have been reviewed or will be under review by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada for protection under the Species at Risk Act. There are a number of amphibians, fish, birds and mammals in the parks that will be managed through population inventories, critical habitat identification, and recovery strategies. Potential recovery actions for listed species will be identified.

BC Breeding Bird Atlas

Marc-André Beaucher, Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area

The British Columbia Breeding Bird Atlas is the province’s most extensive and important bird monitoring project and one of the largest volunteer based initiatives in British Columbia. Between 2008 and 2012 more than one million bird records will be submitted by thousands of citizen scientists from every part of the province. The province is divided into 41 regions to manage coverage of the 10,000 10-km squares. Volunteers survey and count birds in their assigned square. Some volunteers will single-handedly cover more than 20 squares during the course of the five breeding seasons. The data will appear online in real time complete with mapping and graphing tools.

Rogers Pass Project Reclamation after 25 Years: An Example of Successional Reclamation
David F. Polster, Polster Environmental Services Ltd.

CP Rail Roger’s Pass Project was a $500 million double-tracking and tunnel building project through Glacier National Park that was undertaken in the 1980’s. Considerable concern was raised about a major construction project in Glacier National Park which included: two 500 person camps, over 18 km of tunnels, 16 km of surface grade, 2 km of bridges, and a major ventilation shaft at the top of the pass. In addition to the design measures developed to reduce environmental impacts of the project and various environmental protection measures that were installed (e.g. self-contained rotating biological contactor sewage treatment plants for each camp; exhaust filters for kitchen fumes and detailed water and air quality monitoring programs) an extensive reclamation program was developed to treat project disturbances. This paper describes the development of that reclamation program and the results that have been obtained.

Reclamation of Roger’s Pass Project disturbances was based on the re-establishment of the natural successional processes and patterns that have been “reclaiming” natural disturbances in the project area. Initially, a review of the species and patterns of establishment that had developed naturally on various natural and human caused disturbances in the Roger’s Pass was conducted. This information was used to develop detailed reclamation designs for the various project disturbances. Reclamation work was undertaken in concert with the construction so that the biological advantages of working with freshly applied soils and substrates could accrue to the reclamation program. The reclamation work entailed application of specially formulated agronomic species seed mixes and planting a diversity of native trees and shrubs. The first contract on the $500 million project was for the collection of seeds and propagules for the native plants that would be used in the reclamation of project disturbances. Project plants were grown at Lower Mainland nurseries before any construction activity was undertaken in the pass. Of the over one million trees and shrubs that were planted on project disturbances, over half were Sitka alder (Alnus viridis (Chaix.) DC ssp. sinuata (Regel) A. & D. Love), a keystone pioneering species that facilitates the re-establishment of natural ecosystems processes.

Opportunistic monitoring of the progress of the reclamation has been conducted since the project was completed in late 1988. A thesis was completed in 1998 looking at the reclamation progress (Lamb 1998). This paper provides an overview of the results of the monitoring, including inspections conducted in 2007 and the relationship of the reclaimed sites to the surrounding vegetation.

Lamb, T. 1998. A study of plant community structure and reclamation evaluation of disturbed subalpine sites in Glacier National Park, British Columbia. unpublished M.Sc. thesis. University of Alberta. Edmonton, Alberta.
 

The Development of Guidelines for the Management of BC’s Wild Berries

Presented by Michael Keefer, Keefer Ecological Services

Co-authors: Robin Munro, Wendy Cocksedge, Jason Meuleman, and Nancy MacPherson 

British Columbia has a large diversity of edible berry species, many of which are important to wildlife, First Nations, and recreational harvesters, with some being commercially valuable.  Many of these species were actively and passively managed by First Nations for millennia.  Despite the importance to wildlife and people, there is a scarcity of literature to be found on how to manage for these species.  In the interest of developing such guidelines, Siska Traditions Society, the BC Ministry of Forests and Range Research Branch, and others are collaborating on two projects, Measuring Success in Managing for Saskatoon berries and other NTFPs and Synthesis of Knowledge and Development of Huckleberry Management Recommendations in BC.  The former project, being managed by Siska Traditions, also includes an experiment focused on the management of Saskatoon bushes that incorporates traditional knowledge and disturbance ecology, testing burning, pruning, and control treatments.  In its first year the site of the experiment (located in the Fraser River Canyon near Lytton, B.C.) was timber cruised, fuels and fire history assessed, oral history interviews completed, and the relevant literature reviewed.  Results to date show good agreement between field and oral data sources on the stand structure and fire history, and have provided a modern context for a number of Nlaka’pamux terms that refer to plant management.  Data from these projects are being assembled into a consistent searchable format that includes fields such as aboriginal uses, commercial values, habitat relationships, and management considerations such as response to fire, palatability to wildlife, susceptibility to disease, competition, etc.  As part of this project, guidelines were written for the maintenance and enhancement of Saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia), blackcap (Rubus leucodermis), beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), and black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum).  The information being compiled is targeted to resource managers, including First Nations, foresters, agrologists, horticulturalists, and biologists.

Ecology and roadkill risk of an endangered badger population near their range limit in southcentral BC

Presented by: Richard Klafki, MSc. candidate, Thompson Rivers University

Co-authors: Karl Larsen, Roger Packham, Brent Persello

Southcentral British Columbia is the northwestern range limit of the American badger (Taxidea taxus) and supports a nationally endangered subspecies (T. t. jeffersonii). Previous studies have indicated that two main factors are contributing to the decline of badgers in British Columbia, 1) deterioration of suitable low-elevation burrowing habitat, and 2) road mortality caused by major transportation corridors. Since April 2007, we have been investigating how these factors are impacting a population of the animals at their extreme northern limit. Badgers were tracked using conventional VHF telemetry, along with GPS technology in 2007 and 2008. The badgers have been found to have extremely large home ranges (males=358 km², n=14, SD=653; females =30 km², n=8, SD=29) as compared to conspecifics further south, suggesting that habitat is suboptimal and/or access to mates is constrained by low densities of animals. The large home ranges apparently cause animals to make long forays (longest straight-line distance traveled was 84 km in 3 months), bringing them onto roads and railway lines. Specific road-crossing locations were identified and road and traffic characteristics that made badgers susceptible to road mortality were described. We also documented badgers using existing metal corrugated culverts to underpass major highways (mean = 0.5 passages/wk). Roadkill risk appears highest for both sexes during summer months when adult breeding season movements coincide with increased summer recreational traffic. On-going habitat fragmentation and degradation with a projected increase in vehicular traffic in the study area indicate the animals could face extirpation, not unlike that seen within southern parts of their range. Implications for conservation of endangered badger metapopulations susceptible to roadkill are discussed.

Impacts of Western Hemlock Looper outbreaks on forest structure and function in the Columbia Forest District – Implications for mountain caribou
Presented by Gregg Walker, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks

Co-authors: Alfaro, R., A. Shand, V. Waring, and Susan Hall

Western hemlock looper (WHL) (Lambdina fiscellaria lugubrosa) is a major forest insect disturbance agent in the interior cedar-hemlock forests of the Columbia Mountains. This insect is a cyclical defoliator with a periodicity of 9 years that impacts some stands repeatedly. In the Interior cedar-hemlock (ICH) zone, un-disturbed old forests are rare due to forestry, hydroelectric reservoirs, and transportation corridors. These old forests support diverse communities and rare species, including threatened mountain caribou. Though it is clear that WHL disturbance affects old ICH forests, it is not known what impacts are. We studied the history of WHL outbreaks and the landscape and stand level changes induced by WHL defoliation on the structure and function of old interior cedar hemlock forests in the Columbia Forest District. This research included analyses of the Forest Insect and Disease (FIDS) aerial survey data, and the establishment of replicate study plots in stands affected by different outbreaks. There have been five major outbreaks of WHL in the Columbia Forest District since 1937. The dendrochronological record showed that during WHL outbreaks, most of the susceptible forest did not sustain sufficient defoliation for detection by FIDS surveys, but low severity impacts to trees were widespread. In relation to other variants of the ICH forest type, the drier mw1 and wetter wk1 and vk1 variants have a disproportionately high risk of being impacted. This impact occurs in distinct patches, and most (74%) patches of WHL defoliation are smaller than 150 ha in size, while a few patches (8%) were larger than 450ha. Occasionally, WHL defoliation can cause substantial tree mortality and lead to stand replacement, usually in patches smaller than 50 ha. More commonly, defoliation causes low levels of tree mortality and partial tree removal, or levels of tree mortality that are not significantly different than those in unaffected stands. Relationships between WHL disturbance and understory vegetation were not clear, except that diversity decreased with increasing time-since–disturbance by WHL. Understory vegetation tends to return to pre-disturbance conditions within 30 years of disturbance by WHL. Arboreal lichen loading and wildlife tree density was highest in stands with a moderate amount of tree mortality. Patches of severe WHL defoliation (stand replacement) may exacerbate fragmentation of mountain caribou habitat because arboreal lichens and snow interception are lost due to tree mortality, and because the shrubby regenerating vegetation is perhaps desirable for other ungulates and their predators. However, most of the susceptible forest is lightly or moderately impacted by WHL outbreaks and this may be positive for mountain caribou habitat because wildlife trees and arboreal lichen loads are increased, yet canopy cover and snow interception are maintained.
 

About the Selkirk Geospatial Research Centre

Paul Sneed, Ph.D. Coordinator and Research Scientist

http://selkirk.ca/research/sgrc/

The Selkirk Geospatial Research Centre (SGRC) was established at Selkirk College in 2003 to promote the cooperative use of geographic information science, systems, and tools for environmental and socio-economic problem-solving to support the needs, goals, and decisions of the people of the Kootenay region and beyond. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the SGRC’s history, primary mission, some current projects, and future plans. The discussion will highlight the opportunities the SGRC may offer for synergistic research partnerships and collaboration with individuals interested in the application of geospatial research tools.

Dam Operations and Yellow Warblers in the Revelstoke Reach

David Green, Simon Fraser University Centre for Wildlife Ecology

Dr David Green from Simon Fraser University will present the results of three years of work on Yellow Warblers breeding in the drawdown zone of the Upper Arrow reservoir. Detailed studies of this riparian dependent bird are providing a means to evaluate how current and/or future dam operations impact bird populations, assess the overall health of riparian habitat, improve restoration of riparian habitat and evaluate the success of restoration efforts. Dr. Green and MSc. candidate Sam Quinlan's work was funded by the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, BC Hydro ESI and an NSERC Industrial Postgraduate Scholarship.
 

Lessens learned from riparian restoration projects in the South Okanagan

Jason Emery, Solitudo Environmental Services

Jason Emery from Solitudo Environmental Services will also give a presentation on the results and lessons learned from various riparian restoration projects in the South Okanagan. Jason's work focused on riparian habitat creation and enhancement targeting a number of requirements for threatened and endangered species including the Yellow-breasted Chat and Spadefoot Toad. In addition to the "physical" restoration efforts, Jason's work also aims at documenting wildlife responses and usage of these newly formed habitats. This work is funded through the Canadian Wildlife Service (Environment Canada) and supported by groups such as The Okanagan Nation Alliance, The Nature Trust of British Columbia, and Ducks Unlimited Canada.

 

Introduction to Using R Software
May 28-29, 2008
Coast Hillcrest Hotel, Revelstoke BC

As of April 2, the course is full.

We have nobody on the wait list - send your registration if you'd like to be on the wait list.

This course will be run again on demand. Please let us know if you'd like to take the course office@cmiae.org .

Cost: $450.00 +$22.50 GST = $472.50
Software for the course is free from the internet.
Class size: Class size is limited to 8 people.
Course fee includes: Instruction, course manual, and coffee breaks. Participants are to bring a laptop computer pre-loaded with software (see below). Participants are responsible for their own meals and accommodations.
Registration: Click here to register. Be sure you have agreed with the cancellation policy on the registration form.

Course description
R is a free programming environment for statistical analyses and graphics that is becoming increasingly popular among numerical biologists. R is extremely powerful, can be readily extended to non-standard methods through the downloading of packages, and runs on a wide variety of operating systems ( www.r-project.org ). This two-day course will introduce users to R software, so that they are able to begin performing statistical analyses and plotting graphs on their own. The course is suitable for individuals who have never used R before as well R-users looking to consolidate their understanding of the basics.

Note: This is not a statistical methods course; it is a course on how to use the software.

This course will be taught by Dr. Joseph Thorley, R.P.Bio. (Poisson Consulting Ltd., www.poissonconsulting.ca . Joe is a Nelson-based fisheries biologist and analyst with nine years of programming experience.

The course fee includes a course manual and coffee breaks. The course will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day with an hour break for lunch. Participants are responsible for their own accommodation and meals. Rooms are available for $85 plus taxes at the Best Western Wayside Inn, see information below.

See "Requirements", below.

How to register

Click here for the on-line registration page. If you prefer, you can print the registration page and fax it to our office at 250-837-9311.

• Before you register, be sure you’ve read and agreed to the Cancellation Policy on the registration form.

• Your registration form will be acknowledged immediately by an automatic confirmation page, and a personal email within a couple of days. If you don't hear back, please call to confirm your registration was received.

The Columbia Mountains Institute does not accept charge cards. Please mail your cheque for the registration fee to the Columbia Mountains Institute. An invoice can be sent to you upon request (see registration form).

Requirements for the course
Participants are to bring a laptop running Windows 95 or later, with the ability to read a CD. Non-Windows platforms will work but you should contact the instructor to discuss this before you register. (Joe Thorley, joethorley@poissonconsulting.ca )

Participants need to have a working knowledge of linear regression and ANOVA.

The second half of the second day is devoted to analyses of real datasets. If you wish you may bring your own dataset to analyze during this period. Datasets will also be provided.

The following programs should be pre-loaded on your laptop before you arrive at the course.

• R

• A spreadsheet program such as Excel or Open Office Calc.

How to install R software
To install the R software go to http://cran.stat.sfu.ca . Then click on Windows (95 and later) in the Download and Install R Section. Now select Base in the R for Windows Section. Now select R-2.6.0-win32.exe (or the most recent version if R 2.6.0 has been superseded). This is the setup program. Do not follow a link to a test build. Save the setup program to your hard drive. Next double-click the setup program to install R on your machine. Choose the default settings. R should now be installed on your machine.

For questions about installing R, contact Joe Thorley at:
joethorley@poissonconsulting.ca

Course content

Day 1
R basics
Importing data
Programming

Day 2
Graphics
Linear models
Analyses

Location of course
The course will be held in the meeting room of the Best Western Wayside Inn. For information about the hotel, visit www.bestwestern.com  and type “Revelstoke”. For a map of Revelstoke, visit the following web site: www.cityofrevelstoke.com/map/map-start.htm .

Where to stay

A block of rooms has been set aside at the Coast Hillcrest Hotel, which is where the course is to be held. To receive the special rate of $89.00 plus taxes for a single room, you need to mention that you are attending a course held by the Columbia Mountains Institute, at the time you make your booking. This is a full service hotel with an outdoor hot tub. The Hillcrest Hotel is located a few minute's drive east of Revelstoke on the Trans Canada Highway. There is a map on their web site.

Hillcrest Hotel

2100 Oak Drive, Revelstoke, BC
Tel: 250-837-3322
Fax: 250-837-3340
Reservations: 1-800-716-6199

www.hillcresthotel.com

For information about other accommodations in Revelstoke, visit the Chamber of Commerce web site at: www.seerevelstoke.com/vacation .

Getting to Revelstoke
Revelstoke is on the Trans Canada Highway, approximately 5 hours driving time west of Calgary, Alberta; 3 hours east of Kamloops BC; and 2.5 hours north of Kelowna BC. The nearest major airport is Kelowna. Revelstoke is serviced by the Greyhound bus line. The bus depot is one block away from the Best Western Wayside Inn.