In an ongoing effort to educate shoreline residents and communities on lake ecology and riparian health, the Living by Water program encourages responsible lake stewardship through promoting shoreline management. Advisors work one-on-one with residents to improve the condition of their watershed by evaluating their personal impact on water quality, shoreline health, and fish and wildlife habitat. To date, the program has reduced the use of fertilizer, pesticides, phosphate-containing ...
Dr. Shapiro has been an enthusiastic and passionate Science and Environmental Educator in the Province of Alberta for many years. She has provided tireless and committed support to promote environmental excellence through inspirational advisement and work with a generation of student teachers, practicing educators, hundreds of graduate students and members of the Alberta and Canadian Environmental Education Community. She has developed outstanding university courses, award-winning curriculum materials, ...
Habitat loss and fragmentation is the single largest threat to biodiversity conservation in an urban area. As large contiguous habitats are quickly converted into smaller more isolated remnants the value of maintaining functioning ecological connections between patches increases significantly. With the help of a multidisciplinary team, The City of Edmonton incorporated ecological infrastructure with human networks, creating the Wildlife Passage Engineering Design Guidelines (WPEDG), an educational publication that provides clear ...
Many schools in Alberta are challenged with vehicle congestion and idling around school drop-off and pick-up points. A student-leadership group at Captain Nichola Goddard School found a solution to this environmental and safety risk. The Green Commuting Hubs program invites students to meet in various established hubs and, accompanied by a Grade 9 hub leader, walk to school together. The initiative improves air quality and reduces the school’s eco-footprint, while ...
Since 2007, ConocoPhillips Canada School Environmental Quest has partnered with the Elements Society to fund the Destination Conservation Program, assisting schools in fostering an eco-friendly culture by reducing their global footprint and establishing student-led environmental projects and programs. Supporting 145 schools annually in Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, the program grants schools $1,000 to implement environmental and energy-saving programs, and provides resources and workshops to educators on ...
Rob and Michelle Avis envisioned Verge Permaculture as a way to provide real-world solutions to create more sustainable homes, resilient communities and a healthy eco-system; however, what they have accomplished goes far beyond teaching and gardening. Through their accredited Permaculture Design Courses, Verge Permaculture has produced a generation of graduates who apply this new integrated design philosophy with the pragmatic entrepreneurial spirit to the communities they serve. Rob and Michelle’s ...
Reclamation research is integral to Syncrude fulfilling its commitment to return land disturbed by mining to a productive, biologically self-sustaining ecosystem. In 2008, Syncrude launched the Sandhill Fen Watershed Research Project to learn how to design and incorporate peat-forming wetlands into operational scale reclamation. The Sandhill Fen is the largest reclaimed wetland in the oil sands and the first ever landform constructed on a foundation of oil sands tailings. The ...
Since the age of 15, Kelcie has been pursuing her own research in an effort to create a method of remediation to combat the tailing ponds created by one of Alberta’s leading industries – the Alberta Oil Sands. Developing a novel method of remediation that utilizes oyster mushrooms, her research showed a substantial reduction of petroleum hydrocarbons, naphthenic acids and pH levels and an enhanced sodium absorption ratio of both ...
For more than 20 years, Dory has created and organized events and campaigns to help bring awareness and positive change to many environmental issues. In response to manufacturers using excessive amounts of packaging when marketing products, she organized a national letter-writing campaign generating more than 145,000 letters. She wanted to clean up areas that were polluted with garbage, so she organized and participated in more than 30 area clean-ups. Dory ...