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Mozzies and ticks and deer, oh my!
Well into the research at Cook's Lake, Nova Scotia, Earthwatchers Paul Smelter and Yolanda Barba Gutierrez are face to face with raw North American wildlife, including live encounters with porcupines and whitetail deer. They're also running into predators: dreaded mosquitoes (mozzies, to you Down Under Alcoans) and ticks, both of which (unfortunately) thrive on mammals, four-legged and two-legged alike.
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Yolanda Gutierrez's Diary
July 2, 2009: From voles to beavers
Today was a very fun and sunny day. Firstly, we checked our small mammal traps at Cook´s Lake forest. We trapped five voles and two chipmunks! After weighing them, we returned them to the forest, at the same place where we trapped before. Later, we set up camera traps. My team decided to put ours in an area where there were many deer droppings yesterday. Other teams put cameras to film bears, porcupines or more deer. Tomorrow, we can check the film. After having lunch, part of the team looked for field sign transects, especially deer droppings, and the remainder...
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Paul Smelter's Diary
July 2, 2009: Experts at scatology
On this day we do the same thing as yesterday, but with much more knowledge as we have to check our traps again in both the morning and afternoon with about the same results: about five to six voles but still no mice, which is strange according Christina. We also capture a couple of chipmunks, with one escaping first thing before we could check if it is a recapture or a new. There's a good chance we will trap it again, as there are a few traps in both the clearing and the forest areas with a total of one...
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Paul Smelter's Diary
July 1, 2009: Getting down to it
Once again we started the day with a good breakfast before heading off to the research site to check our traps from yesterday, really hoping to find a mouse in the traps. Well, no mice, just voles and a couple of chipmunks. The latter are rather big to fit into our traps -- but they do, so we have to add them to our record sheets with what trap and which line we found them in. After that we reset the traps and place them back into the field or back into the forest areas hoping to trap more throughout...
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Yolanda Gutierrez's Diary
July 1, 2009: Climate change
I want to start my blog today by giving an overview of climate change. It is clear that changing weather patterns are critically important. The first question to answer is, "What influences global temperature?" All the following are important: ocean variability, orbital and rotational Milankovitch variation, plate tectonics and continental positioning, glaciations, greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour), global photosynthetic uptake, volcanism, hysteresis (climatic inertia), cybernetic feedback loops and anthropogenic potential. However humans can impact the climate by using fossil fuels, sulfate aerosols (fossil fuel combustion), cement manufacture (cooking calcium carbonate), changing land use and deforestation. Also livestock are...
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