Towards becoming a CS Ecologist

Methods include pretty much everything

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Project Ideas 

(photo © New York Times) 

This is the time of the year when semester is half-done, co-op info session taken place and suddenly first-year CS students that just began to understand what really programming means are brainwashed by the phrase "personal projects" daily. I requested my dear boyfriend to show me some good collection he saw before from close friends (for example, D.L's programming collection), and while they all look amazing, they are of typical engineer/CS routes.  I don't want that. I want something more special. Something I can label as "yeah, that's what a CS ecologist does".  I thought hard for 5 minutes and came up with a growing list of following things: 

Local hiking app: sync information scatter on websites including time, reviews, difficulty level and preparation, etc. No live-tracking necessary (because really, when a Garmin doesn't even work, your phone really doesn't have a shot) 

Sonograms of birds: this can be combined with phylogenetic trees to track back the evolution of species (i.e. speciation). Research is needed for species (although I'm sure all the info is there), and also a good way to render the info will be better.

Migration pattern of animals (birds/mammals): use connectivity of routes to showcase how animals might migrate. Models are available but further implementation will help visualize the models much better.

Live, up-to-date global forest distribution pattern: I don't know how this can be done. This sounds like a massive project as it should be.

Any takers on saying which ideas really intrigue you to want to see the end product? I might really give it a shot! 

[montereybayaquarium]

Some appetite! Our recently hatched common murre chicks are behind the scenes eating (and eating, and eating) in preparation for going on exhibit. It’s the first time we’ve ever had baby murres at the Aquarium!

The eggs, from different mothers, were taken behind the scenes and incubated by our aviculture staff. They hatched August 29 and 30. We take them behind the scenes for their health and safety, rather than keep them in a busy exhibit environment.

The chicks’ mothers have been with us for many years. One was rescued from the Apex Houston oil spill, which occurred off the northern California coast in January 1986. (In fact, at least one Aquarium employee, Janet Covell, was on the scene helping rescue murres.) Our pair was declared non-releasable by California Fish and Wildlife, and was raised at the Aquarium.

Although the species is not currently listed as threatened, all shorebirds face pressures from habitat damage and pollution. The chicks are being raised at the Aquarium under the auspices of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan (SSP). 

The youngsters are growing fast and being hand-fed small fish every few hours, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. It’s a lot of work! We expect them to be big enough to go on exhibit in in mid October.

 “We’re really excited to have these chicks at the Aquarium,” says Aimee Greenebaum, associate curator of aviculture. “Especially since they were born to rescued mothers that have been here for a long time. It’s a great success story. Plus—they’re so cute!”

Watch our murres live in the Aviary

Learn more about the common murre

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Common murres are so freaking cool. I mean, birds are just so bad-ass. They can do whatever they want and remain their coolness. 

(⇓ Row model)

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Why Conservation? Why Ecological Conservation?

Encouragement: this is not a rhetorical question.

Rather, this is a question I've repeatedly asked myself, many times, with doubts and hesitation. At times too shamefully to admit as I always tell people that I "liked" wildlife, that I'd sacrifice anything for going into the field of conservation sciences. "Only if I could keep up with my words", I'd secretly tell myself. 

It wasn't until in the past 5 years through extensive trial-and-errors that I am finally starting to getting the perspectives of the bigger picture. Conservation is not a personal preference, it is not a hobby, and it is definitely not a hippy, West-coast trend. It is a necessity. I'll have to repeat this again: conservation, especially ecological conservation, is a necessity. It is what keeps us alive up until today. 

It is also a very honest branch of science in that we have to witness our mistakes, admit it, and move on to improve our methods. Ask anyone in the field of applied conservation and they can tell you 20+ things that humans have done wrong to drive a situation to devastation. It could be the whales that were cut up into pieces for the sake of fishing. It could be the exotic species flying in along with introduced game birds. It could loss of native plant to overabundant deer populations. 

Now, I can argue that the emotional wellness of individual human beings rely on constant contact with nature, but I deem that as too personal---even I took a long time to truly experience that joy just because I grew up as a city kid. What I want to better define are the mutual relationships between human society and functional ecological systems. 

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Elfin Lakes, Garabaldi Provincial Park, BC There was lots of the white stuff. 

And average hiking boots and runners. 

We made the trip to Elfin Lakes on Jun. 21 with a group of friends that invited us. It was a beautiful sunny day and at the time-- two weeks into June-- we already had that nice, hot Mediterranean weather Vancouver is famous for. Despite our doubt on the condition of the trail from online reports, lack of warning from the organizers convinced us to happily put on summer shoes, gears and shorts before we headed for the trial head. It was a beautiful, beautiful, and cold, mistake. We felt so great. We felt so miserable. 

30 minute into the trail we hit the snow. First just lumps with lots of gurgling water. Then patches. Then sheets. Then the expanse of whiteness stretching far and beyond our vision. Most of the people we encountered were wearing snowshoes. The reports were right: Elfin Lakes at this time of the year was a snowshoeing trail. Half of the group dropped out, including the organizers. But we pushed on. 

We hiked up in line because the trail was only wide enough for one person at a time. Steepness tripped us and the sun scorched us. We barely met anyone until approaching the lakes and the emergency hut. Throughout the uphill hike it was just the crunching sound of snow, few chickadee calls and quiet gasps at the spectacular mountain view we could hear. I felt I was out of this world. 

It was not until we hiked back that everyone realized we had went the wrong way and hiked up using a far more exposed, steep, and dangerous trail than designated. Aside from my sunburn that lasts a month all the mistakes added up to a surprisingly wonderful trip. The group was great and the views were unbelievable. I heard the snow quickly melted and was far gone by mid July, but if I were to go again I'd still want the snow and maybe hiking boots. I don't know. I'm still debating about the second one. 

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End of Job Term: Reflection 

First thing as I reflected on the work term is how valuable this experience is and how it made my summer. Without this opportunity I'd never have seen myself going into land conservation (or even just conservation), had so much time to explore nature near Metro Vancouver, and became as self-disciplined as ever. I definitely felt I had a peak into what a CS biologist would do. 

The job was an assistance position with lots of self-guidance. All the tasks were very loosely structured and guidelines flexible enough that I could play around with my creativity. Of course because there was so much room for updates and so many things that could be updated, I spent almost a month to begin to figure out what Peter wanted, what the end products should look like, and what areas I had to focus on in order to complete the tasks well. For example, I wasn't necessarily mapping, but I had to know what mapping techniques are there and why they are being used that way. Another case would be that I wasn't contacting any organizations, but I had to pull the strings together to create a knowledge hub to introduce all the organizations to conservation managers. Then there's all the web languages I could learn and utilize, but I needed to understand my learning curves, how much time did I have to master any languages, and how I could use the knowledge to design webpages that I wanted. 

And replying emails fast.  Here's the goods and bads through the job term including what I achieved, and what I have to work on to improve:  Goods

**Knowing softwares/languages I need to learn: Marxan, ArcGIS, Javascript, Linkage-Mapper, DataBasin. **Realizing that my attention span to projects is about 3 hours; however I can always switch between different projects to keep my head spinning (figuratively) **Getting to know Peter, and all the rest of the lab members, better. **Learning how to prioritize. **Learning how to bypass tiny issues to see big pictures. Basically un-stuck myself from tedious jobs.   **Participating in webinar (a first!)  **Finding a future lab I can work at (hopefully) 

Bads

**No chance to go outside (I am missing field work badly; thankfully all the camping trips I did this summer helped. I still wanted to learn more plant and animal ID skills though) **I should've gone to the lab more often no matter how crowded it is. Easier to focus when I'm not working at home. **In the first month when I encountered difficulties I should've communicated more. It would've saved lots of time and effort scouting organizations etc. **Didn't have lots of chance to work for Richard, but he's SO BUSY! I need to push him to give me his Skype! **I definitely had a hard time not being distracted. Our new dorm wasn't set up for working (easily seen through the fact that we do not have WIFI). Next time I need to work at somewhere else. 

A good wrap-up to my summer would be banding with cool friends and do some last-minute home shopping at thrift stores. I really can't wait for school to start and bury me now! 

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Fixing Websites 

There has been a funny phenomenon around the field of ecology research: if you boost yourself as someone who's "interested in computers" you will be given a website maintenance job eventually.  To be honest I'm not complaining about it at all: after all, this is how I got my summer job, by promising "I will learn any of the skills related to building a web interface". 

So here I am, finally fought off a search bar after 6 hours of Googling plus trail and error. This is all the time I could put into after the web-conference in the morning (I was so scared of leaking any stupid sounds I checked my muted status for at least 20 times during the 1-hr conference).

Would I say I'm an expert at making search bars by now? Um not really, but I could spend less time making the next one. 

Now allow me to call this as a form of the spirit of scientific research and merit of tax-payers money. 

And no, I'm actually quite excited about the birth of this biodiversity mapping website. I'm just not excited about wrestling with 10 lines of CSS for hours. 

When I figure out how to put some PHP and JavaScript lines to caption the pictures I have on the pages that's when I'll experience a spiritual orgasm. 

More to come baby. More to come. 

[theartofanimation]

Alexandra Khitrova

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Beautiful. 

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Chilliwack Lake (Flora trail), Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park, BC

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Pantiacolla, Manu National Park, Peru

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Eagle Bluffs (Baden-Powell Trail), Horseshoe Bay, BC 

Eagle Bluffs was a good starter for people training for challenging hikes. To open the hiking season with the bluff's 200 degree view is an extremely rewarding experience. 

As part of the Baden-Powell trail, the 8K route (from the Horseshoe Bay direction) only has 350 elevation gain, yet challenges your knees and courage at the very steep and rocky slope just before the look out. From my experience I highly recommend good hiking boots with sturdy ankle protection to stop your ankle from rolling with the rocks. Also, a pair of trekking poles will enhance your hiking experience significantly by reducing the stress on your knees as you climb down. 

It does not take more than 3 hours to get to the top, and with its close proximation to downtown Vancouver (40 min according to Vancouver Trail, but I don't live in Vancouver so don't quote on me) this is a very desirable destination for younger fellows to hang out, get in shape and have a great time. 

The landscapes is another part of why Eagle Bluffs is great for friends to come together. During the hike the surroundings switches from gurgling streams to quiet fir/spruce mixed forest to windy paths zigzagging the pale, moss-covered midstory to ragged, unstable rock masses to enormous and smooth boulders, top with dry shrubs and tiny white flowers, that support your feet as you look down. All the way.   

Once you reach the top, the spectacular view will make all your hiking effort worth it; I tried to take a couple of panorama photos but even with the wide angle the pictures couldn't do the view justice, and I ended up keeping only single shots and left my memory do the job. 

Few catches about this trail: pick a dry, sunny day to hike up for best view possible; it's okay if you miss some orange tags and go the wrong way (of course 20 of us did it together, several times); the ravens at the lookout are trained enough to be able to attack your backpacks and steal credit cards.

And there are blue grouses everywhere. You just have to listen for the hooting. 

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Ruckle Provincial Park, Salt Spring Island, BC

During the long weekend of Victoria Day, Vancouver was drenched in periods of showers and cloudy breaks; meanwhile in the Dry Zone, both land and marine creatures enjoyed the cool breeze and gleaming sun beams sent from the ocean. One breath and I could taste just the perfect amount of salt, mixed with the crisp smell of fresh spruce needles. 

Funny as it is, in the past 7 years when I lived in Metro Van I had not gone camping for once. I acquired most of my camping experience while living in the Amazonia rainforest during a field assistant job last year. But oh my had that toughed me up in half a year. Coming back to BC with the reborn heart of the jungle, I made a promise to myself to explore BC as much as possible this summer, which resulted in this amazing camping trip. 

Temperature-wise, Ruckle was chillier than all of us thought, in the morning while the sun lingers, it's a good 16-18 degrees, however at night it dipped down to ~6 degrees, and we are talking about late May. Wind and high humidity didn't help, and I had to huddle together with my beau at night, in a sleeping bag.    

The 4-day camping trip was perfect in length, enough to allow us to explore most of the park yet not get tired of it. Ruckle is far from any major town centres, and stripped of any transportation tools the 10 of us came in with all the food we needed for the 4 days.

I wasn't with enough enthusiastic ecologists to enrich my current knowledge of natural history, however I did see a couple of deers while hiking (beep, deer overpopulation beep beep), common birds (raven, goldfinches, house finches, pacific wrens, bald eagle and other raptors  I couldn't identify, aaaaaand a sooty grouse, now that's not that common), intertidal marine lives and tons of arbutus trees. You know, the nice little things that you can name right away and play with. 

Definitely a nice little area to look around, enjoy the spectacular water view by the campsites, however do not jump into the water for a swim, and also remember to bring some water containers to fill water from the drinking stations as the park impose a no-dumping policy on any of the water drains.