Students from the Lethbridge College Ecosystem Management class will be presenting on the following topics:
Meghan Knapton will speak on “Identifying deer-vehicle collision hotspots in Lethbridge, Alberta.” The objective of this study was to locate deer-vehicle collision hotspots within the city of Lethbridge. The project aimed to determine if deer were being struck by motor vehicles in specific and/or concentrated areas of road within the city of Lethbridge between 2016 and 2019.
Conner Blenner-Hassett will speak on “An inventory of the plant species found in four environmental reserve parks of Lethbridge, Alberta.” Using a daubenmire frame (25 cm by 50 cm), he identified the plant species that fell within the frame based on their cover class. For his final results he plans to obtain a species composition of each park based on transects, and include percentages of weeds, increasers, decreasers, and invaders found within plots. The focus is on Cottonwood Park, Popson Park, Botterill Bottom Park, and Indian Battle Park.
Kirstin Kveder will speak on “Examination of biases in morning bird surveys and suggestions for improved species richness estimation in central Alberta.” The project objective is to determine biases of morning bird recordings (which primarily focus on songbirds/passerines singing) by finding out which species, genera, and orders were found in morning bird surveys (single 10 minute manual point counts and 10 minute acoustic recordings) and which species were not found, but were detected in a census data set (10 minute acoustic recordings hourly for 72 hours) for three study sites on Nature Conservancy of Canada properties east of Red Deer in central Alberta. The aim is to address the following objectives:
1) Determine the taxonomic biases that the common morning surveys have,
2) Suggest additional sampling hours that would best improve overall species richness measures and reduce these biases.
Each student presentation will be 15-20 minutes followed by question and answer. This is an excellent opportunity to connect with emerging research, methodologies, and interesting findings.