A Geographic proposal (part 2)

This afternoon, I had a half-hour meeting with Annapolis MLA, David Bowlby. I presented him with my latest blog post: A Geographic Proposal.

He asked if I could provide him with a one page description that could be shared with MLA’s in the Valley, and beyond. I promised that I would have it done by tomorrow morning (Tuesday).

He also shared with me two thoughts:
a) the need to map where in the Annapolis River they could obtain water to fight forest fires.
b) the use of drones for tree harvesting and agriculture management.

There remain a couple of unanswered questions,
a) Define the geographic extent of the Valley?
See A Guide to Moving to the Annapolis Valley, p12.
Three First Nations Communities.
Eight Municipal Units.
b) what is the extent of the Valley REN?

A Geographic Proposal

Ernest Buckler has written about ‘ The Mountain and the Valley’. From a landscape perspective, we should include South Mountain, the Valley, North Mountain and the Bay of Fundy.

“ Today, the Annapolis Valley is home to NSCC’s Annapolis Valley campus in Middleton, the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown and Kingstec in Kentville, offering full-time programs and continuing education (www.nscc.ca). The town of Wolfville is home to one of Canada’s premier undergraduate universities, Acadia University, http://www.acadia.ca “ p.30.

At the NSCC campus in Middleton, we have CORAH, Centre of Rural Aging and Health. We also host the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG).

At the Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS) in Lawrencetown we have access to Geomatics technology and Geographic information Science.

The proposition is to redefine CORAH to include access to the technology at COGS, and retired faculty to address the application of these modern technologies, and apply them to all aspects of the Valley landscape: sea level rise, changes in global climate that impact agriculture, forestry and fisheries resources management. Could become the Centre of Rural Landscape and Human Health (?)

This builds upon current and retired faculty who live in the region. It permits access to the technology, and its application to resource issues in rural Nova Scotia. It can also be combined with the ‘creative rural economy’ and the Shorefast economic model from Fogo Island

Step 1 would be to host a conference of thinkers, dreamers/doers and next generation entrepreneurs at the Centre of Geographic Sciences in the Spring 2026.