AGRG at 20

This week, the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) in Middleton celebrated their twentieth anniversary. It was the first Applied Research unit at the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC).

In 2011, Chris Hopkinson, Jeff Wentzell and I left the group. Chris went to Alberta and established his own research team. Jeff joined the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture. I retired and then travelled with Heather on a variety of her Parks Canada assignments, to Baffin Island, Haida Gwaii, Churchill and Sable Island. More recently, I have been writing my blog.

As a follow up to the previous blog on Community Mapping, I contacted Brent Hall at ESRI Canada. I was interested in the potential to act a Geography mentor to my grandchildren. They are scattered from British Columbia, Ontario and Nunavut. I was curious if there was a program for children under ten years old. To my surprise, I discovered the GIS Ambassador Program which I will investigate further in the months ahead.

Further to the discussion on clearcutting and spraying on crown land, I can also report that Doug Hickman has offered a very clear response to SNBRA, UNESCO and the provincial government.

“The issues we highlighted are the types of forestry that are being practised and the location on crown lands where they are being practised (in this case within the UNESCO-designated Southwest Nova Biosphere Reserve).”

The engagement of the next generation in mapping our changing communities and the specifics of land use change are both worthy topics for applied Geomatics research. They would showcase the effective use of this technology in Nova Scotia and beyond.

Postscript

At the Great Expectations cafe in Annapolis Royal I found Harold Horwood’s memoir ‘Among the Lions’. Horwood lived for a number of years at Upper Clements, Annapolis County.

“Moreover, I discovered that I had invented a structure: my essays would begin with some local incident or observation, such as paddling a canoe on the Basin, working among bees and clover, examining a pond through glass-clear ice in winter. But following that, they would move from the local to the general, and from the general to the theoretical,” p.224.

Finally, I received Emergence Magazine. It contains an interesting video, Upstream, by Robert MacFarlane entitled Upstream. It follows a river in the Cairngorms to its source.