![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Dig they must]](/images/2002/0731larry.gif)
Students transplanting indigenous shrubbery on the reclaimed Cytec site in Niagara Falls. |
When UW environmental studies lecturer Larry Lamb first visited the site, much of the 800-acre property owned by Cytec Canada Inc. was covered with the rubble of crumbling buildings, abandoned when the chemical company and former munitions plant was downsized. Cytec officials had attended a presentation Lamb gave on natural landscaping in St. Catharines in 1995, and approached him about an ecological rehabilitation of their site.
Lamb saw the potential for a collaborative venture. With $700,000 in funding from Cytec, the school of landscape architecture at the University of Guelph, and the environmental studies faculty at UW agreed to work together on the project.
Graduate students in Roger Suffling's Planning 720 course took a first stab at the task, identifying possible approaches for the greening initiative. Lamb's Environment and Resource Studies 280 class -- assisted by ERS professors Stephen Murphy and Greg Michalenko -- conducted an inventory, looking at soil and water conditions and surveying the plants, birds, animals and butterflies on some 250 acres earmarked for restoration.
The "gem of the Cytec property" was a slough forest, "a mixture of ridges and shallow seasonably wet or dry depressions, or sloughs" supporting a diversity of trees, including silver maple, red ash, tupelo, sugar maple, beech and pin oak. "There was no serious chemical contamination of the site," says Lamb, "and no danger to humans." Complicating the effort, however, were "areas of extensive concrete building pads, with broken and unbroken asphalt pavement, brick rubble, areas of cinder railway ballast, gravel fill and intervening pockets of soil."
Based on the findings of the ERS 280 survey and the priorities identified by Cytec officials, recommendations were given to a class of graduate landscape architecture students at Guelph. The class developed concept plans, including designs for the location of forests, meadows and wetlands. A winning concept was chosen and refined to create a model.
Rather than take a "golf course approach" to altering the flat terrain, it was decided that "no heroic measures" would be used. Instead, emphasis was placed on simply restoring plant communities indigenous to the Niagara region without extensive landscaping. Since the concrete foundations on the site would be costly to remove, they were broken up, with the rubble used to create ridges "for topographical relief." These were planted with alvar species comfortable in a limestone environment, using an innovative approach to a landscape challenge.
Healthy natural habitats, such as the slough forest, were allowed to develop naturally with no interference except the removal of litter and alien plants.
Some 60 species of birds, as well a variety of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and butterflies were observed by the ERS 280 class, and recommendations were made to improve their habitat and encourage greater diversity.
Some 90 students from both universities were hired for the work. They collected seeds indigenous to the area, performed plant and shrub rescues in the Niagara region, and created their own greenhouse on site for nurturing young specimens. As well, they installed hundreds of bird houses and gained hands-on experience with everything from root pruning to dealing with financial management, says Lamb.
One of the most successful -- and most innovative -- projects was the transfer of "living mulch". Using a bulldozer, a section of wildflowers and a small quantity of top soil was carefully scraped off one area and dumped on a section of barren ground double the size, leaving the roots on the donor site. The technique proved to be a fast and efficient way to propagate wildflowers.
Five years later, reports Lamb, "we've doubled the diversity of the site." Results can be seen in the number of birds, butterflies and plants.
"The cooperation between the universities on project-specific research and implementation was immensely successful," he adds. "We learned from each other." And he commended Cytec on its role, noting that "normally you don't get industries doing this sort of thing. I think it's going to catch on." In June, Cytec received the Niagara Region 2002 Environmental Award "for the company's outstanding contribution to environmental conservation in the Niagara Region".
The series, hosted by UW president David Johnston, addressed key issues about the dependence of the health system on information technology, the adequacy of the investment in these technologies, and whether the health system is getting its money's worth.
Full video and audio of the presentations and copies of the presenters' slides can be accessed via the InfraNet web site and clicking on "Seminars Online".
The presentations available:
"Our system is still information-impaired due to poor investment and under-investment in IT. Perhaps even more important than the technologies is the strategy and the will to deploy them at a level that will make a real difference."
"This important series furthers the InfraNet Project's goal of examining the impact of information and communication technologies on the community," says Shirley Fenton, manager of the InfraNet Project at UW. "The Smarter Health Seminars addressed the issue of better health care through information technology -- a topic which is of interest to us all."
The Smarter Health Seminars will resume on September 18. The upcoming series, "Smarter Health -- The Innovators", will highlight innovative contributions of private industry and collaborations between private industry and health organizations in the health care system.
"Due to the number of applications received, we regret that we can not respond to external applicants who apply to the vacancies listed below unless an interview is scheduled.
"If there are no qualified internal applications, a decision may be made, no earlier than seven working days from the job posting, to seek external candidates. All applications received after this decision will be treated on an equal basis, without consideration of the internal status of the candidate."
On this week's list:
And more from HR: "The university welcomes and encourages applications from the designated employment equity groups: visible minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and aboriginal people. For more information call ext. 2524."
![[What can you do but laugh?]](/images/2002/0731carolyn.gif)
The deed is done:
Carolyn MacGregor, of the systems design engineering department, was
shorn of all that gorgeous red hair on Monday, as part of
a
fund-raiser for the Canadian Cancer Society. Paul McKone of
engineering computing shares in the hysteria.
Derek Crozier of systems design captured the photo from a digital videocamera.
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| Weather 'advisory': hot and humid today |
The Arts Lecture Hall will be "shut down for repairs" from today through the end of August, the plant operations department says.
The weekly discussion group sponsored by Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo will be held tonight at 7:00 in Humanities room 373. This week's topic: "Surviving the Search for the Perfect Relationship".
Today is scheduled to be the last day for "VM" computing service -- sometimes known as VM/CMS -- on campus. Says the information systems and technology department: "With the completed implementation of all major business systems onto UNIX and Windows server-based architectures, IST is now planning the termination of the VM environment. We have attempted to contact everyone who has used VM in recent months to arrange alternatives and to mention the intended retirement. . . . The current plan is to retire the WATVM system as of July 31, 2002. If you need more information or have any concerns, please contact Bob Hicks, ext. 2194, or Martin Timmerman, ext. 3403." The shutdown is a historic one -- VM has been around for some thirty years, and there was a time when almost everybody who "used computers" at UW was working in VM on the old machine called WATDCS. But the moving cursor writes, and having writ, moves on.
The international programs office says that students who are going abroad in the coming academic year have been bidden to a "mandatory pre-departure orientation" session on August 7. Just in case anybody missed the invitation, here's the word: the session runs from 4:30 to 6:00 on that day, next Wednesday, in Davis Centre room 1302.
Finally, I said something in yesterday's Daily Bulletin about people who read the Bulletin from remote and unusual places. So it was a pleasure to receive an e-mail message last night from Lily Cong, who will be coming to UW as a first year math-accounting student in September, and who says she's been reading the Bulletin regularly for a while now, to get to know the place. "Now," she wrote, "my date is July 31, but I can only read the Daily Bulletin of July 30 -- because I'm on the other side of the planet -- Beijing, China, 12 time zones away from UW, for the summer vacation." It's true, she tells me, that Internet cafes in China have been closed following a recent disastrous fire in one of them: "I'm lucky to have Internet access at home, so that I don't need to go out to find a computer in this burning weather (40C!)."
CAR
TODAY IN UW HISTORYJuly 31, 1961: President Gerry Hagey strikes a committee to look into "the academic and operational problems involved" in changing from four terms a year to three. |