'Coastie' pics a fun way people can help Parks Canada track coastline changes
CBC
What do you get when you combine a selfie with a coastline?
Parks Canada climate change specialist Garrett Mombourquette and his colleague Kim Gamble on P.E.I. were tossing around the idea, and came up with the term "coastie."
Mombourquette pitched the idea in an innovation competition for Parks Canada employees, and the coastie initiative was born.
"The idea had been talked about for a while, knowing that people had smartphones and that we might be able to do something constructive with the photos that people were already taking of our beautiful beaches," Mombourquette said.
"Then it was just serendipitous. I proposed the idea internally. The University of Windsor simultaneously reached out to discuss the collaboration, and it was just —the stars aligned."
Starting this month, Canadians are being invited to share their photos from special cellphone cradles or stands set up at five national parks, including the Prince Edward Island National Park on the Island's North Shore.
"A coastie is simply a photograph of the coastline, and it's something that Parks Canada and the University of Windsor will be able to use to help us to monitor coastal change, and better understand the impacts of climate change," Mombourquette said.
"Citizen science means that visitors are the ones who are collecting the information."
Researchers at the University of Windsor are part of the coastie initiative, and will analyze the photos and use them to track changes to the coastlines, including erosion, storm surges and ice cover, vegetation, beach use and even rip currents.
"Not to nerd out too much, but what's cool about this initiative is that coasties will always be taken from the same location, and we will actually be able to survey that location, so that we can rectify that image and overlay it onto a map," Mombourquette said.
"Then track coastal change just the same way that we monitor coastal erosion, as part of our ecological integrity monitoring program. So this will complement nicely some of the work that we're already doing."
The other locations are Fundy National Park, Kouchibouguac National Park, Point Pelee National Park, and Sable Island National Park Reserve, with one to three coastie stands at each site.
"It will be exciting for me to see how as coasties these roll in, and as we collect some more data, how climate change differentially impacts these five different national parks," Mombourquette said.
Mombourquette said the coasties are already starting to appear on social media.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.
New poll results released by Narrative Research suggest the Progressive Conservatives are heading into Tuesday's provincial election with a commanding lead over their political rivals.
A measles outbreak in New Brunswick is set to push Canada's annual case count to the highest it's been in five years, highlighting how infectious the disease is and how low vaccination rates have allowed it to take hold, says an immunologist.