Vancouver Island

Within the context of a continental-scale planning initiative, the Puget Sound/ Georgia Basin area and the Coastal Pacific region of Vancouver Island and Olympic Peninsula were selected by a tri-national team of scientists and resource managers as priority conservation areas. The Baja California to Bering Sea Initiative represents a cooperative agreement of the three countries to establish a common conservation vision for the region. These regions were selected based on their unique ecology – the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin area was identified because it is an inland sea encompassing complex benthic habitats, extensive tidal flats, eel grass beds, large salmonid runs, and because it is important to the killer whale, a species of common conservation concern of the three nations. The outer coast was selected based on productive fisheries and its importance to seabirds and marine mammals. At the same time, the growing human populations along the coast and expanding marine tourism industr...

Urban, rural, agriculture, and high-density residential buildings feed into the Throup Stream catchment (Sutherland 2013), located in rural Sooke, a southern Vancouver Island town supporting a population over 11,400 (Statistics 2013). The 98.31-hectare watershed is more than 200 times smaller than the district’s largest, the Sooke River watershed (CRD 2009); yet it remains one of Sooke’s most polluted streams, which is precisely why the district counts the Throup Stream catchment as one of four high priority watersheds for the region (Sutherland 2013). This ground inspection focused on the lower reaches of Throup stream, paying close mind to a transitional, non-forested wetland into which Throup Stream empties before again being channelized toward Sooke Harbour. Once supporting chum and Coho salmon (Sutherland 2013) the stream’s hydrology and ecological health have been considerably altered by roads, including the main highway into Sooke, invasive plant species, increases in impervious surface areas, erosion and sediment-loading, all of which have compromised proper functioning in especially the lower reaches of Throup Stream (Sutherland 2013). Returning Throup Stream to proper functioning condition capable of supporting anadromous fish species would require a host of costly restoration, stewardship, and monitoring initiatives.

Physically based models are commonly used as an integral step in landslide hazard assessment. Geomorphic principles can be applied to a broad area, resulting in first order assessment of landslide susceptibility. New techniques are now available that may result in the increased accuracy of such models. We investigate the possibility to enhance landslide susceptibility modeling by integrating two physically-based landslide models, the Factor of Safety (FS) and the Shallow Stability model (SHALSTAB), with traditional empirical-statistical methods that utilize terrain attribute information derived from a digital elevation model and land use characteristics related to forest harvesting. The model performance is measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and sensitivity at 90% and 80% specificity both estimated by bootstrap resampling. Our study examines 278 landslide initiation points in the Klanawa Watershed located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We use a generalized additive model (GAM)and a logistic regression model (GLM) combining physical landslide models, terrain attributes and land use data, and GAMs and GLMs using only subsets of these variables.In this study, all empirical and combined physical-empirical models outperformthe physically-based models, with GAMs often performing significantly better than GLMs. The strongest predictive performance is achieved by the GAMsusing terrain attributes in combination with land use data. Variables representing physically-based models do not significantly improve the empirical models, but they may allow for a better physical interpretation of empirical models. Also, based on bootstrap variable-selection frequencies,land use data, FS, slope and plan/profile curvature are relatively the most important predictor variables.

Pregnancy is considered a feminine experience in mainstream Canadian culture. Babies identified as female at birth are expected to grow up to become feminine heterosexual mothers. This research considers the desires, choices, and experiences of individuals who were identified as female at birth, but who do not identify as feminine heterosexual women; this dissertation focuses on the reproductive desires, choices, and experiences of butch lesbians, transmen, and genderqueer individuals in British Columbia. Three methods and two distinct populations formed this research. Participant observation was conducted in 21 cities across southern BC. Questionnaires were completed by 28 health care professionals (HCPs), and by 46 butch lesbian, transmen, and genderqueer (BTQ) individuals. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 10 HCPs, 8 BTQ individuals who had experienced at least one successful pregnancy, and 4 BTQ individuals who had either experienced or been diagnosed with a condition linked to infertility. What I found, is that for many BTQ individuals, reproduction associated with the female body (ie: pregnancy and breastfeeding) is not exclusively considered a feminine desire or experience. In fact, what I discovered is that BTQ individuals who experience pregnancy and breastfeeding explicitly challenge the cultural fetish associating femininity with reproduction (including pregnancy, breastfeeding, mothering, and fertility). Thus, I highlight not only the typically ignored desire and achievement of pregnancy of BTQ individuals, but also how BTQ individuals have experienced breastfeeding, how some BTQ parents raise queerlings, and how some BTQ individuals have negotiated diagnoses and experiences of infertility. Overall, I highlight the unique and various expectations and experiences that butch lesbians, transmen, and genderqueer individuals have regarding their ‘female’ (and potential) biological reproduction. In the end, I hope that by presenting the diverse reproductive experiences, desires, and choices of BTQ individuals, that I can foster more of an understanding of these experiences, desires, choices, and individuals, and thus challenge the cultural fetish that links femininity with ‘female’-associated reproduction. Moreover, I offer recommendations for health care professionals in an effort to foster more understanding in BTQ health care, as well as help to facilitate more queer competent health care professionals.

The Jurassic Bonanza arc, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, represents an exhumed island arc crustal section of broadly diorite composition. We studied bodies of mafic and ultramafic cumulates within deeper levels of the arc to constrain the conditions and fractionation pathways leading from high-Mg basalt to andesite and dacite. Major element trends coupled with textural information show the intercumulus crystallization of amphibole, as large oikocrysts enclosing olivine in primitive cumulates controls the compositions of liquids until the onset of plagioclase crystallization. This process is cryptic, occurring only in the plutonic section, and explains the paucity of amphibole in mafic arc volcanics and the change in the Dy/Yb ratios in many arc suites with differentiation. The correlation of octahedral Al in hornblende with pressure in liquidus experiments on high-Mg basalts is applied as an empirical barometer to hornblendes from the Bonanza arc. It shows that crystallization took place at 470–880 MPa in H2O-saturated primitive basaltic magmas. There are no magmatic equivalents to bulk continental crust in the Bonanza arc; no amount of delamination of ultramafic cumulates will shift the bulk arc composition to the high-Mg# andesite composition of bulk continental crust. Garnet removal from wet magmas appears to be the key factor in producing continental crust, requiring high pressures and thick crust. Because oceanic island arcs are built on thinner crust, the long-term process generating the bulk continental crust is the accretion of island arcs to continental margins with attendant tectonic thickening.

Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C. is an area of high-profile land-use conflict. In 1995, local scientific and management groups recognized bats as an important component of forest ecosystems. With almost no existing bat information for this area, we began studies of the bat community, with the goal of inventorying the bat community and identifying critical

Constitutional law provides a public space of appearance. Within this space, people mutually guarantee their civic rights as a pluralistic collection of equals. This interpretation draws on Hannah Arendt’s concept of rights; it suggests that constitutional law and political action are two sides of the same coin. If otherwise, the public would be alienated from the legal system that frames their lives, and the law would lose its legitimacy without the reaffirmation by compliant public actions. This inherent connection between law and politics has been undervalued by some Canadian legal scholars, resulting in an overstatement of the law’s power and autonomy. Tina Loo make such an overstatement in her 1992 article, “Dan Cranmer's Potlatch: Law as Coercion, Symbol, and Rhetoric in British Columbia, 1884–1951.” Here, she argues that law derives its power from the state’s coercive force, the courts’ ideological symbolism, and the legal discourse’s rhetorical devices. Narrowing her discussion to rhetoric, Loo claims that legal discourses abstract from the nuances of our lived experience to reframe behaviours to their essential elements. Moreover, this process relies on specialized language, i.e. professionalized jargon. As demonstrated in the Dan Cranmer Potlatch trials, lawyers use the power enabled by the laws’ rhetorical presentation to discover contradictions which create gaps of inapplicability, spaces of freedom as it were. Loo argues that British Columbia’s anti-Potlatch laws were successfully challenged through the realization of such gaps. This assertion is incomplete. An important factor in the anti-Potlatch laws’ decline was their exposure to the politics of the public sphere, that space of appearance enabled by constitutional law. The issue raised by the anti-Potlatch laws was: who has the right to enter this space?

Like other indigenous First Nation communities throughout Canada, the Tla-o-qui-aht people are survivors. Over a century of cultural genocide, Christianisation, forced assimilation, land alienation and re-settlement reduced their numbers tenfold and pushed them to the brink of extinction. But despite environmental, social and cultural upheavals, the Tla-o-qui-aht are slowly but surely strengthening their ability to cope with social and environmental challenges, including climate change.
A Tla-o-qui-aht political scientist Eli Ens talks about his people’s unique and carefully thought out community development plans that are designed to address many environmental and social challenges, including climate change.

Culturally modified trees (CMTs) provide tangible evidence of long-term forest use by Indigenous peoples. In Northwest Coast cedar forests, this record rarely spans beyond the last three centuries because older bark-harvest scars have been obscured through taphonomic processes such as natural healing and decay. Thus, archaeological visibility and identification are hindered. Here, I recover chronologies of ancient forest harvesting using a post-impact assessment methodology of targeting old-growth clear-cuts in southern Nuu-chah-nulth territories on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Bark-peeling scars are identified and dated in cross section by growth-ring patterns of recently logged trees. Approximately half of all bark-peeling scars are "embedded" inside healing lobes, suggesting at least half of all such CMTs are effectively invisible in standing forests. Features in these post-impact surveys predated those discovered in conventional archaeological impact assessments by a mean of almost a century. Additionally, one of the oldest continually used cultural forests ever recorded, dating to AD 908, is found in the Toquaht Nation traditional territory. These findings uncover measurable frequencies of cedar-bark harvesting generations prior to the contact period and reveal the inadequacy of heritage protections for old-growth cedar stands.

Los árboles culturalmente modificados (CMTs por sus siglas en inglés) proporcionan evidencia tangible del uso a largo plazo del cedro por parte de los pueblos Indígenas. En el noroeste del Pacífico, este registro rara vez se extiende más allá de los últimos tres siglos o la duración de vida potencial de los bosques circundantes. Se ha pensado que las cicatrices culturales más antiguas en el cedro están ocultas a través de procesos de curación natural o deterioro a lo largo del tiempo, lo cual impide su identificación. Aquí recupero cronologías de usos antiguos de bosques a través de las "evaluaciones post-impacto" de recientes recortes claros de bosque de viejo crecimiento en el sur de los territorios de Nuu-chah-nulth en la costa oeste de la Isla de Vancouver, Columbia Británica, Canadá. Las cicatrices de peladura de la corteza se identifican y datan en sección trans-versal según el patrón de crecimiento del anillo dentro de los árboles recientemente talados. Encuentro que la mitad de todas las cicatrices de peladura de la corteza de los cedros están "incrustadas" dentro de lóbulos de curación e invisibles dentro de un bosque en pie. Se encontró que las características de estas evaluaciones post-impacto son anteriores, en promedio, a las des-cubiertas en las evaluaciones de impacto arqueológico (AIAs por sus siglas en inglés) convencionales de casi un siglo. Uno de los bosques culturales de uso continuo más antiguo jamás registrado, que data de 908 dC, se encuentra en la Primera Nación Toquaht. Los hallazgos descubren frecuencias medibles de las actividades humanas generaciones anteriores al período de con-tacto y revelan la insuficiencia de las protecciones del patrimonio regional para las masas de cedro de viejo crecimiento.

Prepared for Stronger than Stone: (Re)Inventing the Indigenous Monument Conference, Co-hosted by the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD), Calgary; and the Mendel Art Gallery, Museums 3.0, the Kenderdine Art Gallery at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Wanuskewin Heritage Park, Saskatoon, November 2014.

High-frequency marine radar has been successfully used to estimate and monitor local populations of Marbled Murrelets Brachyramphus marmoratus in diverse situations and is becoming a standard tool for these purposes across the species' range (Hamer et al. 1995; Burger 1997, 2001, ...

The effects of ocean conditions on highly migratory species such as salmon are difficult to assess owing to the diversity of environments they encounter during their marine life. In this study, we reconstructed the initial ocean migration routes of juvenile Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha originating from Oregon to Southeast Alaska using coded wire tag recovery data from Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and National Marine Fisheries Service research surveys conducted between 1995 and 2006. Over this 12-year period, 1,862 coded-wire-tagged juvenile Chinook salmon were recovered along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska from March to November. Except for those from the Columbia River, most juvenile Chinook salmon remained within 100–200 km of their natal rivers until their second year at sea, irrespective of their freshwater history and adult run timing. Northward migration of most coastal stocks was initiated during their second or possibly third year at sea, whereas the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound stocks primarily migrated onto the continental shelf after their first year at sea. In contrast, Columbia River Chinook salmon generally undertook a rapid northward migration that varied among life histories and stocks. Columbia River spring Chinook salmon were recovered as far north as Prince William Sound, Alaska, during their first summer at sea, whereas very few Columbia River fall Chinook salmon were recovered north of Vancouver Island. In addition to northern migrants, a fraction of the Columbia River spring and fall Chinook salmon actively migrated south of the Columbia River. The stock-specific initial ocean migration routes described in this study will aid in the identification of the appropriate spatial and temporal scales for assessing the processes regulating Chinook salmon recruitment in the marine environment.

The availability of high resolution (1 m or better) imagery from space opens up the possibility of automatic detection of coniferous trees. Our test site is located within the Greater Victoria Watershed (GVWD) on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. In previous research we have examined various filters for detecting trees over an area with mature and immature Douglas fir trees. We have obtained a 1 m spatial resolution digital orthophoto generated from aerial photography, MEIS 1 m multispectral imagery, and IKONOS panchromatic 1 m imagery over our test site. Within the test site, there are ground plots in which the location of each tree has been determined. These detailed plots are used to assess the accuracy of the methods used for tree detection for each of the high resolution image types. The characteristics of each tree are documented allowing for an assessment of the conditions leading to the identification, or lack of identification, of each tree. The comparison of three differing data sources, each with 1 m spatial resolution, indicates favorable results for the IKONOS satellite data. The highest proportion of the trees from the field stem plot data were identified with the IKONOS satellite panchromatic imagery. While the IKONOS results have a higher rate of false positives than the airborne multispectral data, a preference for the satellite data is due to characteristics such as ease of collection, large image extent, repeatability, and radiometric consistency over a larger area

Analyses of surface samples of 84 sites from southern Vancouver Island were used to characterize pollen and spore spectra of modern vegetation types. Xeric Quercus garryana Dougl. and grassland associations can be identified by Quercus pollen and abundant nonarboreal pollen, respectively. Coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) forests are distinguished by high proportions of Pseudotsuga and low Pseudotsuga to Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg. ratios. Coastal Western Hemlock zone forests have abundant Tsuga heterophylla pollen. Dry Coastal Western Hemlock subzones have diagnostically abundant Pseudotsuga and Tsuga heterophylla pollen, and intermediate Pseudotsuga to Tsuga heterophylla ratios. Moist Coastal Western Hemlock variants are characterised by little or no Pseudotsuga pollen and high Pseudotsuga to Tsuga heterophylla ratios. The Mountain Hemlock zone exhibits abundant Tsuga mertensiana (Bong.) Carr. pollen percentages and notable nonarboreal p...