Curt McCartney is an associate professor of plant science in the U of M’s faculty of agricultural and food sciences.

“I was always interested in genetics,” he said. “I took introductory courses in high school and got interested in genetics. I also grew up on a farm in southern Manitoba.”

McCartney explored various scientific fields during university, weighing options between plant genetics and other areas of study. Ultimately, he decided to focus on crop breeding after taking a third-year undergraduate class.

To read the article, visit The Manitoban.

For the 2020 field season, CEOS research associate and drone technician Madison Harasyn and I are sampling two distinct stormwater retention ponds at the University of Manitoba SmartPark once a week. Sampling began in June and is planned to continue until the end of September; this is an overview of our field work day on the fifth of August.

To start off the day, we load up our truck at the Sea Ice Research Facility (SERF) with the boat in tow and all of our equipment: the drone and its cameras, an Idronaut CTD probe, an ASD handheld spectroradiometer, a Secchi disc, and a cooler for storing water samples. Both of the ponds are close by, so we are lucky enough to be able to use SERF as a convenient base of operations.

CEOS Research Associate Madison Harasyn with a truck full of supplies for sampling stormwater systems

Sampling begins at the west pond, which is a naturalized stormwater retention pond surrounded by emergent vegetation such as cattails. We have spotted many red-winged blackbirds, ducks and ducklings, and a few migrating American white pelicans here over the summer. Upon our arrival we make a few observations and jot them down in our field notes, these include: the percentage of cloud cover in the sky, the estimated wind speed as per the Beaufort wind scale, the wind’s direction, and the growth of vegetation in and around the pond.

Stormwater retention pond

Before taking the boat on the pond, Madison flies the drone, a DJI M210 RTK model, over the pond in two flight paths. One of these flights is an L-shaped transect across the pond from shore to shore at an altitude of 25 feet. The other flight is higher, at around 175 feet, depending on the wind speed that day. Using images captured from the second flight we can later stitch together an image of the entire pond, which is then called an orthomosaic.

DJI M210 RTK model drone

The camera attached to the bottom of the drone during these flights is the MicaSense Altum, which is a multi-spectral camera, meaning it has multiple lenses with different filters that each take a picture simultaneously. These images can be used to see how much blue, green, and red light was captured by the drone at one spot, while near-infrared and longwave infrared imagery are also captured. Before and after each flight we hold the drone over a barium-sulfate reflectance panel and take a picture. We can use these panel images during processing to measure the solar irradiance on the ground and calibrate the flight images accordingly.

After flying the drone, we push the boat into the pond with all of our water sampling equipment in it. Using a GPS, we navigate to a consistent spot on the pond and set up. Here, the ASD handheld spectroradiometer is used to measure the reflectance of the water. This process also involves using a reflectance panel for calibration much like the one for the drone camera. The ASD is a hyperspectral sensor, meaning it takes very high resolution measurements that tell us how much light is being reflected back from the water at many different wavelengths. The range of wavelengths it measures includes those of the various filters of the Altum camera attached to the drone. Using the ASD, we can essentially get a “close-up” of the water that we can compare to the images from the drone.

ASD handheld spectroradiometer

After using the ASD, we take a water sample with a bottle, rinsing and shaking it three times with surface water before taking the final sample from slightly below the surface. From the sample bottle, we take a subsample for algal community analysis into a smaller vial that contains Lugol’s preservative. One of these vials is pictured below, the dark colour of its contents is due to the preservative.

Sample from stormwater retention pond

We also take a profile of the water using the Idronaut CTD probe, where CTD stands for conductivity, temperature, and depth. A Secchi disc, 30 cm wide and painted black and white, is lowered into the water and used to visually indicate water clarity; this is measured by the depth at which the white portion can no longer be seen. A simple thermometer is used to measure temperature in the air and on the water’s surface.

After we finish our field work at the west pond, we head back to SERF for lunch before heading back out to the east pond. While our sampling routine at the east pond is the same, the pond itself is quite different. It is about a meter shallower and generally more turbid than the west pond, and is classified as a conventional stormwater retention pond as opposed to a naturalized one.

Stormwater retention SmartPond

The east pond is surrounded by rocks and does not have the same tall grasses and cattails surrounding it. Vegetation has slowly covered the rocks over the past few weeks, but in June the shore was still relatively bare. While the majority of them are geese, birds frequent this pond as well. We have spotted pelicans stopping to rest here too, and what I believe to be a double-crested cormorant, although I am not an ornithologist!

The east pond has an algae advisory sign, pictured below, that the west pond does not. Toxic blue-green algae blooms are notorious for washing up on the shores of Lake Winnipeg and have been spotted here as well. One of the goals of our research is to contribute to the advancement of water quality monitoring techniques that allow for the early detection of events such as harmful algae blooms.

Toxic blue-green algae advisory sign at the retention pond

After we finish sampling for the day, I take our water samples back to our lab at CEOS, where the bottles are refrigerated overnight. I filter them the following day, giving the filter papers 24 hours to dry in a desiccator before freezing them for future analysis of parameters such as chlorophyll-a, total suspended solids, suspended phosphorus, and various others. The results from these analyses will tell us about the optical properties of the water and its levels of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen. This knowledge can help us understand our ASD measurements and drone imagery, as well as provide insights for beneficial management practices of the retention ponds.

This story was originally published on the Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative website:

https://lwbin.cc.umanitoba.ca/a-day-in-the-field-sampling-the-smartpark-retention-ponds/

More than 150 middle-and-high school learners met with climate researchers on March 5 for Arctic Science Day. Students learned how new knowledge is developed from working in Arctic conditions, and how the learning process can be a lot like playing video games.

Arctic Science Day is a partnership between FortWhyte Alive and the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba. It connects students from grades 6-12 with climate scientists involved in various forms of environmental research, from physics to chemistry to playing with video game joysticks.

But first, the kids had to learn the basics.

Over 100 grade 6-8 students from three schools learned about the challenges of oil spill clean-up in the Arctic. After PhD candidates introduced students to the interactions between freshwater and saltwater in the Arctic Ocean, students got engaged in an oil-spill response workshop.

Next, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr. Michelle McCrystall initiated the youth with climate models with a computer simulation. “Climate modelling is the process which aims to allow us to further understand important interactions in the climate system and to project these in to the future to predict potential changes in Earth’s climate,” she says.

“The predictions are based on a number of factors such as future energy sources, population size, projected socio-economic growth and land use change of varying degrees to give a range of possible future climate scenarios,” Dr. McCrystall adds.

More than 60 high school students from 15 schools spent the day visiting research stations on FortWhyte’s Lake Cargill, learning about sunlight reflection and absorption through sea ice, remote sensing of ice thickness, and how to take ice core samples.

Students also learned how to age a narwhal by counting the growth lines on its tusk, and about technology used in marine mammal research. Other topics included impacts of ocean acidification and contaminants like methylmercury.

Research Associate Maddie Harasyn showed how drone piloting is part of collecting climate data through remote sensing. Harasyn operates a drone like a real-life video game to collect land surface data.

“The students were really interested in the technology, and how cool and exciting drones are. And then they were even more excited to learn about how scientists apply the data to mapping vegetation or finding caribou in the forest,” Harasyn says.

Maddie Harasyn showing the sensors on a drone used in Arctic research

It’s not only drone pilots like Harasyn who get to operate joysticks for science. High-scoring gamers couldn’t help but hear PhD candidate Lisa Matthes compare the underwater navigation methods of her research to playing a video game.

“When we visit the North for field measurements, we no longer only drill small ice holes for single measurements. We want to study larger scales to understand what is happening to the Arctic sea ice under a climate change scenario. To do so we use underwater drones, called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that are equipped with large sensor arrays and can be driven below the ice for hundreds of meters. ROVs are connected through a long tether to a computer and a joystick, sitting in a tent on top of the ice,” Matthes explains.

“My job as a researcher is now to play a three-dimensional underwater video game by driving a very expensive ROV along sampling transects without bumping into ice chunks or getting off-course.”

Students left 2020’s Arctic Science Day with a sense of some of the career opportunities in Arctic science – and not just the ones related to gaming.  In the words of some inspired high school students:

“I learned how many different branches of science are present in Arctic research –a wide variety of careers.”

“Environmental science must be studied from different angles – biology, chemistry, physics – to gain a full understanding.”

“I realized that Arctic research is going to be forever on-going and with the research we are doing today, we can use it to determine how we should be acting or supporting actions around climate change.”