The climate crisis, city biodiversity, ‘plant a tree’, ‘if the bees die, we die’ – all the consciousness-raising nudged me into a nervous attempt at a balcony garden. After a lifetime of believing I was incapable of keeping a houseplant alive, I was unprepared for the joy of waking up to discover that a plant has bloomed its first-ever flower while I was asleep. I am not even the tiniest bit embarrassed about how happy this has made me.
If you were to set up the conditions by which powerful humans can continue to pollute the planet for profit despite years of warnings and everyone actually experiencing a warming, degrading environment. You’d probably want to ensure that people couldn’t trust any of the information they were receiving until they were thoroughly confused and remove any routes to organising that counter-movements might have.
That #AI and Twitter / Threads seem to be on exactly that path is frankly terrifying. #ClimateDiary #ClimateCrisis
The next paper we published on this issue focused on the #wetlandscape and how replacing #wetlands with #stormwater ponds changes the #connectivity among remnant wetlands. See the toot about it I posted here #
The multi-million dollar underground parking garage carved into the shore of Lake #Ontario that the Doug Ford Conservative govt is building for #ThermeSpa will accommodate 2000+ vehicles.
There will be only ONE exit.
For comparison, the lot under #Toronto City Hall has 3 exits for approx. the same number of vehicles.
#MistakeOnTheLake #TrafficJam #onpoli #topoli #OntarioPlace @ONPlace4All
There are two types of cats: murder and doofus.
#caturday #cat #cats #catstodon #catsofmastodon #murdercat #humor #humour #funny
#Stormwater ponds don’t make great #wetlands, but in #urban areas, they can be the only #aquatic #habitat around. In our latest paper, led by Waverley Birch, we investigate the effect of stromwater ponds on connectivity within the #wetlandscape using #graphtheory. We find that wetlands were more connected before #urbanization, but ponds may provide stepping stones connecting remnant wetlands in urban areas.
Read it here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07011784.2023.2224522
The water has to go SOMEWHERE. So when we fill in #wetlands to build #houses we end up building #stormwater ponds. In a pair of papers led by Waverley Birch, we showed that this is happening across 7 municipalities in Ontario and predicted the rate of future #wetlandloss. The wetlands being destroyed are mainly small and the stormwater ponds replacing them are even smaller. You can read about that paper in @thenarwhal https://thenarwhal.ca/southern-ontario-wetlands-study/
The water has to go SOMEWHERE. So when we fill in #wetlands to build #houses we end up building #stormwater ponds. In a pair of papers led by Waverley Birch, we showed that this is happening across 7 municipalities in Ontario and predicted the rate of future #wetlandloss. The wetlands being destroyed are mainly small and the stormwater ponds replacing them are even smaller. You can read about that paper in @thenarwhal https://thenarwhal.ca/southern-ontario-wetlands-study/
In light of Google announcing today that they will block news, read our publisher's words on #BillC18, what it means for Canadian journalism and what it means for Tyee readers.
👉 "Previous COVID infection is associated with an increased risk of #RSV requiring medical attention both for children age 0-5 AND specifically in infants 0-1.
More evidence that “immunity debt” isn’t real & that COVID infection puts kids at risk of worse outcomes from other pathogens."
- Dr. Genevieve Eastabrook MD FRCSC, London, ON. @placentadoc
#LongCovidKids #Covid #onpoli #ontED
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.12.23289898v1.full.pdf
I am a Canadian ecologist, based in #Ontario with a focus on wildlife ecology and evolution, including:
#connectivity #infectiousdisease #climatechange #mammals #genetics #genomics #hybridization
When #invasivespecies have just arrived, we know rapid response can succeed in #eradicating the #invader, but once established eradication can become unrealistic. How should land managers determine whether to tackle an established #invasive #species or not? It can become a big drain on #resources and even erode support.
Our #openaccess #paper just out https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/full/10.1139/facets-2022-0200 provides 3 decision support tools for #naturalResourceManagement
@girls_can @empiricism There is literature describing succession of above and below ground organisms following wildfire. There is also some literature describing what will happen when recovery times between wildfire disturbances decrease and when fire severity increases, as we're seeing now. I've also noticed the wildfire literature has really grown in recent years for some reason...<sarcasm> #wildfire #succession #recovery
This sums up my #ecological despair #today. The #wildlife and pets and vulnerable folks with no access to #cleanair are in my thoughts. What are the long term consequences of this new #fire regime going to be? 😩 #wildfires #airquality
I had my goodbye meeting with my writing mentor this morning. She loves my new short story, a #LandBack revenge tale called “The Tupilaq” inspired by my battles in Kitchener over ecological destruction. I entered it in a cli-fi contest. Not sure it’s what the judges are looking for, but I think writing contests should be looking at #IndigenousFuturism , don’t you? #Indigedon @waterlooregion #Indigenous #WritingLife @indigenousauthors
No gym for me. The air quality is too dangerous. I feel like I’m living the bad-air scenario from Total Recall or The Expanse. Worried that I won’t be able to go camping again. Worried about all the people and animals who can’t find clean air. #ClimateDiary #CanadaWildfires #AirPollution
Thames Water is on the brink of collapse. Why? Because, since privatisation, the investment funds that own it have milked it dry. Its debt levels equal the eyewatering amount of dividends paid out to investors. Renationalise all water companies now.
#water #CorporateGreed #PublicServices
https://news.sky.com/story/ministers-weigh-contingency-plan-for-collapse-of-thames-water-12910760
I moved to girls_can@TheCanadian.social Posts about #ecology #teaching #biodiversity #contaminants #university #academia #ONpoli #CanPoli #conservation #nature #GreatLakes #parenting she/her