SOOF presentation and more

Nina Newington made a presentation to Middleton Town Council on Monday evening; asking council to send a letter to Premier Houston, asking him to pause all harvesting and road-building activities in forests over 80 years old on Crown Land in Annapolis County until such time as 20% of Nova Scotia’s lands have been permanently protected.

Besides Nina, there were fourteen members of SOOF (Save Our Old Forests) in support of the motion. It was interesting to see the reaction of Council to the amount of clearcutting in the county over the last twenty years.

This prompted the following thought. At COGS in Lawrencetown, we have been providing training in both GIS and Remote Sensing since the early ‘80’s. It should be possible, in collaboration with the Provincial Government’s Department of Natural Resources, to provide detailed maps of changes in the forest cover and type, over the last forty years. This information could be correlated with changes in wildlife populations, forest fires, and other human impacts on the landscape ecology. Another contribution would come from citizen science.

Tuesday, we dropped into Lawrencetown Library for one-on-one technical support. My issue was to fully understand the difference between password and passcode.

To allow me to transition smoothly between my iPad and my iPhone. Greg was able to talk me through the subtleties of the technology. Heather’s issue was running out of space between her mobile phone and the cloud.

This intergenerational support is even more critical with age. The world of Google continues to intrude into our daily routine.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nina for a succinct and clear message on the state of our Old Forests. Thanks to Greg for his technical advice. Thanks to the Middleton Council for reminding me of the technology tools available at COGS. We will not manage our landscape effectively, without this detailed geographic knowledge and technology.

References

Save Our Old Forests (SOOF) newsletter, June 4, 2023.

Dr Frank W. Morse Memorial Library, Lawrencetown, One on One Tech Help, Annapolis Valley Regional Library.

Postscript

Edward sent me a link to the Canadian Interactive Wildland Fire Information Interactive map, via his wife, Anne.

https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/interactive-map

and in Quebec. where they are about to enter their 5,000 km plein air painting journey “FootstepsEast” (read upcoming blog post).
https://sopfeu.qc.ca/en/maps/