News

Courtney Robichaud, intern extraordinaire, presented yesterday at the IAGLR (International Association for Great Lakes Research) 2014 meeting in Hamilton.  Her talk profiled research into the impact that European Common Reed, also known as "Phrag," is having on bird communities in Long Point, ON.  This region is a World Biosphere Reserve, a provincially significant wetland as well as an Internationally Important Bird Area.  The marshes in Long Point represent 70% of the wetlands on the north shore of Lake Erie and the greatest concentration of marsh habitat on the Great Lakes.

Dr. Rooney's speech at the World Wetlands Day Symposium has been posted on youtube.  You can watch her describe Alberta's new wetland policy and its implementation challenges.

New position available in the Rooney Lab for a summer student. May serve as a co-op placement or a 499 project credit. See the attached job ad!

World Wetlands Day celebrates the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance  in Ramsar, Iran back on February 2nd, 1971. Although only 21 parties signed initially, now 168 are signatories to the Convention. With over 2000 wetlands designated under the Convention, over 206 million ha of wetland are now protected. Wetland-rich Canada is the nation with the largest area of RAMSAR protected wetlands: 130,000 km²!

A new note published in the journal Wetlands details a rapid assessment method we (Dustin Raab, Suzanne Bayley, and Rebecca Rooney) developed to estimate above ground biomass, using a sort of barbershop pole with red and white horizontal stripes.  Named after the rangelands researcher who first used it, the Robel pole uses visual obstruction as a proxy measure of vegetation biomass.

Dr. Michael Paterson, Senior Fellow and Research Associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development is visiting Waterloo at the invitation of Dr. Rooney and the Water Institute. He will be presenting a talk on the legacy and future of the Experimental Lakes Area in DC 1302 at 2 pm.  

Are you a Canadian interested in a Masters degree in Wetland Ecology?

Dr. Rooney's lab is currently seeking applicants for 2 Domestic MSc. positions.

Facts:

MSc. students at the University of Waterloo receive a minimum of $20,600 per year to support their studies.

They gain teaching experience through teaching assistantships in their field.

They take only 3 courses, sparing time to focus on their thesis.

Dr. Rooney was invited to sit on the 10 member Science Advisory Committee (SAC) for the Experimental Lakes Area. This is a huge honor!

You can read more about the SAC here.

The Rooney Lab recently acquired a neat new tool: a GPS unit with sub-meter real time accuracy.  This device lets us map the distribution of different vegetation communities in the field.

Since 1993, Alberta's wetlands were governed under an Interim Wetland Policy.  Just today the province announced its new policy.

You can read about the new Alberta Wetland Policy here.