The current wellbeing crisis in Canada is magnified in rural areas. Also, rural economies are negatively affected by lack of suitable youth lifeskill training. Rural communities lack financial capital to address these issues on their own. 4-H has been building rural youth skill for over 100 years, offering a variety of options, including physical activities […]

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) recently introduced stringent regulations for the treatment of ballast water. Ultra-violet (UV) light is a useful technology in a ballast water treatment system (BWTS), for inactivating species which could be invasive and harmful to humans and the environment. UV damages DNA and prevents replication, but the vital stain methods […]

In 1995, proportions of several stocks of Fraser River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) began to enter the Fraser River system early to spawn creating uncertainty in mortality and spawning abundance estimates. This has created large problems for fisheries management in their attempt to protect less abundant stocks. To address this issue, Fisheries and Oceans Canada […]

This research would determine the costs of securing and restoring drained wetland areas on private lands in the Wintering Hills area of Alberta, Canada, through the use of an approach called a “reverse auction.” Collaborating with Ducks Unlimited Canada, the project would pay farmers to allow wetlands to be restored on their property. The payment […]

Roche Lake is the Roche Lake is the largest lake among 12 highly productive water bodies in the Thomson-Nicola region of BC’s southern Interior Plateau. It has experienced algal blooms over the past four years indicating a change in nutrient loadings to the lake. Roche Lake suffered a winterkill of more than 50% of fish […]

The project involves the identification of a Canadian community to be compared with Barcelona (Spain), Bristol (UK) and other two international communities, all experienced cities on sustainability with more than 100 partners including businesses, NGOs, academia and the public sector. The Canadian community must comply with certain criteria to make findings comparable with the international […]

Biofilms, surface-adherent microbial populations with enhanced tolerance to antibiotics and disinfectants, are widely-known contamination sources in environmental, industrial and medical settings. Novel approaches for the prevention and remediation of biofilms using nontoxic materials are urgently required. Interestingly, natural polysaccharides and nanopowders have anti-biofilm properties. We will develop a sustainable anti-biofilm technology using PhytoSpherix™ (Mirexus), a […]

Morphodynamic models are increasingly used in watershed management to predict the evolution of river channels and to test management scenarios prior to their implementation. The impact of plants in riparian zones is particularly critical to better document, but the current models rarely integrate this component. This project will use a bank erosion module and a […]

The Bicknell’s thrush (Cathurs bicknelli) is a rare songbird with the most restrictive breeding range in North America. The Bicknell’s thrush spends its summer months breeding in high elevation, stunted growth forests – a habitat that the species specializes in. In New Brunswick, there has been a documented population decline of 11.5% per year since […]

Polar bears are curious, and that curiosity often leads them into conflict with people. Park and wildlife managers across the Arctic need to understand why polar bears approach people and whether they do so because of human activities, a lack of sea ice, or a combination of both of these factors. Currently, this is not […]

Many of the Harrison River tributaries no longer support historic levels of salmon productivity because of barriers to fish passage, loss of in-stream structural complexity, and ingress of invasive species. The Sts’ailes Fisheries Group has identified the need for an investigation of the historic and current stream characteristic to identify future fisheries restoration opportunities along […]

In the backcountry, avalanche risk is managed by first assessing avalanche hazard and subsequently carefully choosing terrain and travel procedures accordingly to mitigate the identified hazard. What are suitable terrain choices under different types of avalanche conditions and how are choices made? With this project, we quantitatively examine large-scale terrain choices in two commercial backcountry […]