Welcome to the Landscape Ecology and Spatial Analysis (LESA) lab, directed by Dr. Yolanda Wiersma. Please use the links above to navigate my site. Here’s the LESA Lab News for this month.

Winter 2023

Fall 2022 was very busy, and I did not post any updates at all! Happy 2023 everyone! Here are the highlights from last semester, and I hope to do a better job keeping this site updated in the new year!

Welcome to the newest lab members: Katrina, Jeremy and Robin joined the lab in September 2022, and Madan is joining us in January 2023. I will get their bios up soon. Also, Niels joined as an RA/Tech – jointly between my lab and Dr. Shawn Leroux’s lab.

Congratulations to Hayley for being awarded an NSERC PGS-D scholarship!

Congratulations to Katrina for being awarded an NSERC PGS-M scholarship!

Jillian was awarded the Entomological Society of Canada Danks Scholarship. Well done!

Fall was busy with finishing up field work (Hayely) and processing summer samples (Jillian, Katrina).

In publication news, PhD grad Travis had another paper accepted:

Heckford TR, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, M Rizzuto, J Balluffi-Fry, IC Richmond, YF Wiersma. 2022. Ecoregion and community structure influences on the foliar elemental niche of balsam fir (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) and white birch (Betula papyrifera Marshall). Ecology and Evolution 12(9): e9244.

As well, the following papers came out from our group since the last post:

• Bowering KL, KA Edwards, YF Wiersma, SA Billings, J Warren, A Skinner, SE Ziegler. 2022. Dissolved organic carbon mobilization across a climate transect of mesic boreal forests is explained by air temperature and snowpack duration. Ecosystems  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00741-0
• Wiersma YF. 2022. A review of experiments to understand spatial dimension of ecological processes. Ecological Processes 11(1):57.
• Wiersma YF. 2022. EDITORIAL: Carrying out experiments in landscape ecology. Landscape Ecology 37:1729-1732
• Wiersma YF, DC Schneider. 2022. Microlandscape experiments: scale, scaling, and cross-scale inference. Current Landscape Ecology Reports 7: 116-127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40823-022-00077-4.
• Wiersma YF, RT McMullin. 2022. Are calicioids useful indicators of boreal forest continuity or condition? Biodiversity and Conservation 31(5-6):1647-1664. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02418-5

Spring/Summer 2022

Congratulations to Dr. Travis Heckford on successful completion of his PhD! You have contributed a lot to the lab during your time here and will be missed!

Congratulations to Hayley for passing her PhD comprehensive exam! Well done!

We are busy getting ready for the field season. Hayley is doing some survey work across the island; Jillian is surveying lichens and arthropods on the Avalon, and Honours student Kristen is doing some urban lichen research.

My new book is out! The eBook version is available here. If your university library has a Springer subscription you should be able to download chapters; otherwise you can purchase the eBook or individual chapters. The hard copy is scheduled to be out mid-May!

Winter 2022

Here is a link to an article in the MUSE (Memorial University’s student paper) about a mentorship program that Jillian established. I have heard from a few undergraduates about how much they are valuing this program. Thanks Jillian, for setting it up!

Congratulations to Travis, for submission of his PhD for examination. His defense is scheduled for April 4.

My new book is out! The eBook version is available here. If your university library has a Springer subscription you should be able to download chapters; otherwise you can purchase the eBook or individual chapters. The hard copy is scheduled to be out mid-May!

In publication news, we have some new papers out from the group:

Wiersma YF, RT McMullin. Accepted. Are calicioids useful indicators of boreal forest continuity or condition? Biodiversity and Conservation.

Allen JL, RT McMullin, YF Wiersma, C Scheidegger. Accepted. Continent-wide population genetics and biogeography of lungwort lichen in North America support distinct eastern and western gene pools. American Journal of Botany 108: 2416-2424 https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajb2.1774

Heckford TR, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, M Rizzuto, J Balluffi-Fry, IC Richmond, YF Wiersma. 2022. Spatially explicit correlates of plant functional traits inform landscape patterns of resource quality. Landscape Ecology 37:59-80. Read-only version available here: https://bit.ly/3GSjvnL; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01334-

Bowering KL, KA Edwards, YF Wiersma, SA Billings, J Warren, A Skinner, SE Ziegler. 2022. Dissolved organic carbon mobilization across a climate transect of mesic boreal forests is explained by air temperature and snowpack duration. Ecosystems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00741-0

Balluffi-Fry J, SJ Leroux, YF Wiersma, IC Richmond, TR Heckford, M Rizzuto, J Kennah, E Vander Wal. Accepted. Integrating plant stoichiometry and feeding experiments: state-dependent forage choice and its implications on body mass. Oecologia https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-05069-5

Richmond IC, Balluffi-Fry J, E Vander Wal, SJ Leroux, M Rizzuto, TR Heckford, JL Kennah, GR Riefesel, YF Wiersma. 2022. Individual snowshoe hares manage risk differently: Integrating stoichiometric distribution models and foraging ecology. Journal of Mammalogy 103: 196-208. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyab130

Rizzuto M, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, IC Richmond, TR Heckford, J Balluffi-Fry, YF Wiersma. 2021. Forage stoichiometry predicts home range size in a small terrestrial herbivore. Oecologia 197: 327-338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04965-0.

Fall 2021

Happy Academic New Year! We are back in person (for the most part) on campus and excited to soon be moving into a brand-new buidling.

We have some new personnel who have joined the lab – see the link above to view their profiles.

In publication news, we have some new papers out from the group:

Allen JL, RT McMullin, YF Wiersma, C Scheidegger. Accepted. Continent-wide population genetics and biogeography of lungwort lichen in North America support distinct eastern and western gene pools. American Journal of Botany.

Heckford TR, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, M Rizzuto, J Balluffi-Fry, IC Richmond, YF Wiersma. In press. Spatially explicit correlates of plant functional traits inform landscape patterns of resource quality. Landscape Ecology Preprint available on bioRxiv https://bit.ly/3onx3x5.

May 2021

We are kicking of May with congratulations to two lab almuni, both of whom are now in their PhDs at other universities. Both Bella (now at Concordia) and Patrick (now at Waterloo) were awarded NSERC PGS-D awards this spring! Congratulations to you both, and good luck in your PhD research!

April 2021

Congratulations to Hayley who was awarded one of two PhD scholarships from the Women’s Association of Memorial University!

Congratulations to lab alumna Tegan, who secured a permanent position as an Ecosystem Biologist with the British Columbia Department of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources!

March 2021

The Science Atlantic meeting is happening this month. It will be a Virtual Meeting (last year’s was scheduled just as everything was shutting down and thus it got cancelled), and I am one of the keynote speakers.

February 2021

Three papers that were accepted late last year are now out. Each is led by one of my 3 recent MSc students. Congratulations to Bella, Rachel and Patrick on these publications! Here are the citations:

• Richmond IC, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, T Heckford, M Rizzuto, J Balluffi-Fry, J Kenna, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Temporal variation and its drivers in the elemental traits of four boreal plant species. Journal of Plant Ecology. doi.org/10.1093/jpe/rtaa103
• Wigle RD, YF Wiersma, A Arsenault, RT McMullin. 2021. Drivers of arboreal lichen community structure and diversity across scales. Botany 99: 43-54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjb-2020-0061
• Lauriault P, YF Wiersma. 2020. Habitat restrictions over space and time influence the micro-niche and rarity of tree-dwelling cyanolichens. The Lichenologist 52: 455-458. doi:10.1017/S0024282920000493

In other writing news, I helped write the editorial for a cross-journal special issue (hosted at the Journal of Applied Ecology) on the theme of Citizen Science. You can read the editorial here.

January 2021

Well, 2020 is behind us, here’s hoping for better things for 2021. It was a tough year for many; I feel fortunate to have had a job and a safe place to work and live. I was on a sabbatical to boot, so managed to get some productive writing done!

This semester I am teaching two courses remotely – Landscape Ecology and Conservation in Practice. I like doing both these courses – it will be a bit different in the online world, but I think it will be okay.

December 2020

Double congratulations to Bella, who passed her MSc exam AND had a first paper accepted, all in the same week (and all while she was en route driving between the Rock and Ontario). Way to go Bella! Bella will be starting a PhD at Concordia in January, working with Carly Ziter in the urban landscape ecology lab.

Bella’s paper is out of the TERG project and will be in press soon:

Richmond IC, SJ Leroux, E Vander Wal, T Heckford, M Rizzuto, J Balluffi-Fry, J Kenna, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Temporal variation and its drivers in the elemental traits of four boreal plant species. Journal of Plant Ecology.

November 2020

The big event in the lab this month was Bella’s exit seminar – delivered online, which made it a little less celebratory… however, the online nature meant her mom could attend, as well as some former lab mates, which was cool!

Congratulations to lab alumni Patrick on the acceptance of the third and final chapter from his MSc thesis!

1. Lauriault P, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Habitat restrictions over space and time influence the micro-niche and rarity of tree-dwelling cyanolichens. The Lichenologist.

A paper that was announced as accepted last month is now out in Early View:

Balluffi-Fry J, SJ Leroux, YF Wiersma, TR Heckford, M Rizzuto, IC Richmond, E Vander Wal. Accepted. A multiscale test of selection for plant elemental variation by moose reveals individual-based trade-offs of forage quantity and quality. Ecology and Evolution. doi: 10.1002/ece3.6975

October 2020

The lab had a flurry of paper acceptances this fall – some of which were announced on previous posts. Now we have links to most of them. They feature papers by alumni Tegan Padgett and Rachel Wigle, as well as from our past guest visitor Jennifer Doering. Finally there are two papers from the TERG group, one led by WEEL lab member Julianna and one led by my fellow PI Dr. Leroux. References are below:

1. Balluffi-Fry J, SJ Leroux, YF Wiersma, TR Heckford, M Rizzuto, IC Richmond, E Vander Wal. Accepted. A multiscale test of selection for plant elemental variation by moose reveals individual-based trade-offs of forage quantity and quality. Ecology and Evolution.
2. Doering, JA, T Booth, YF Wiersma, MD Piercey-Normore. Accepted. Inferences about dispersal model for the semi-aquatic lichenised alga Diplosphaera chodatii using spatial modelling. BMC Ecology.
3. Padgett TA, YF Wiersma. 2020. Importance of boreal forested swamps for arboreal macrolichen communities. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. Online first: https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2020-0042
4. Wigle RD, YF Wiersma, A Arsenault, RT McMullin. 2020. Drivers of arboreal lichen community structure and diversity across scales. Botany. Online first: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjb-2020-0061
5. Leroux SJ, YF Wiersma, E Vander Wal. 2020. Herbivore impacts on carbon cycling in boreal forests. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2020.07.009

September 2020

Well it’s another academic new year, and it will be a bit of a different one.

Our university is doing undergrad courses online and access to campus and labs is still limited. I’m on sabbatical, so was planning to work from home most of the time (I hadn’t planned to travel anyways).

We’re welcoming three new members to the LESA Lab – check out their profiles on the “people” page. We’ll be scattered in different physical locations for the next while, but we’ll still be meeting and working actively on research, which we will keep you

August 2020

Congratulations to two lab alumna – Rachel and Tegan – who each had a chapter of their respective MSc theses accepted for publication this month. References below.

Padgett TA, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Importance of boreal forested swamps for arboreal macrolichen communities. Canadian Journal of Forest Research.

Wigle RD, YF Wiersma, A Arsenault, RT McMullin. In press. Drivers of arboreal lichen community structure and diversity across scales. Botany.

On top of that, two papers from the TERG team recently got accepted – details will be posted here later.

Despite the challenges of COVID, folks are still hard at work. Alumnus Patrick is working on revisions to the last chapter of his MSc,and our our guest visitor from a few years ago, Jennifer D is also about to re-submit a paper.

And congrats to lab alumna Tegan, who landed a job in BC to develop a Land Stewardship Guardian program with the Stswecem’c-Xgat’tem First Nation!

June 2020

I facilitated a few online discussion in April about online teaching, which we have collectively developed into an online blog post. You can read it here.

Despite that we are all working from home during the global COVID-19 pandemic, things are still happening at the LESA Lab.

First, I have to catch up on reporting of a lab member’s recent achievement that I forgot to post in the last few months. Bella recently was awarded the Canadian Institute of Geomatics -NL chapter Student Scholarship. Because of COVID we don’t have a photo of her receiving her certificate (and cheque!). Congratulations Bella!

Second, I mentioned in the May monthly news that lab alumna Tegan had a paper out based on work she did at Terra Nova National Park following completion of her MSc. I neglected to include the citation, so here it is.

Pagett T, A Aresenault, RT McMullin. 2020. Chaenotheca brachypoda and Sclerophora peronella, Two calicioid lichens new to Newfoundland and Labrador from Terra Nova National Park. Evansia, 37(2):61-70 https://doi.org/10.1639/0747-9859-37.2.61

Now on to June updates:

In provincial conservation, some exciting news: the Natural Areas System Plan is finally out. Residents of the province are welcome to comment on the plan. Read more here.

Patrick has a second chapter from his thesis accepted for publication! Congratulations!

Lauriault P, YF Wiersma. In press. Identifying critical habitat for boreal felt lichen (Erioderma pedicellatum) in Newfoundland, Canada. The Bryologist.

Bella has submitted her first chapter for peer-review – an important milestone! Way to go!

And congrats to lab alumna Tegan, who landed a job in BC to develop a Land Stewardship Guardian program with the Stswecem’c-Xgat’tem First Nation!

May 2020

I facilitated a few online discussion in April about online teaching, which we have collectively developed into an online blog post. You can read it here.

Despite that we are all working from home during the global COVID-19 pandemic, things are still happening at the LESA Lab. Here are some highlights from recent weeks:

Also, the IALE-North America Virtual meeting happens this month! If you are curious what a virtual meeting will look like, check out this video tour of our “Virtual Venue“. As well you can watch our “Kick off Webinar“. All other conference events are behind a paywall (you can register as late as May 10).

And a final note from a lab alumnus – Shad Mahlum, who successfully defended his PhD in Norway this week. He had to defend remotely, which called for an specific dress code! Congratulations Dr. Mahlum! Shad finished his MSc in the LESA lab back in 2013.

April 2020

Well, things have certainly changed since the last update, and we’re 2 weeks into April and I’m just updating the website.

The term finished up online, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m glad to report all my grad students are safe and well. Fortunately they are all in write-up stage, and didn’t have field work planned. Field work for this coming season looks doubtful… I’ll be brainstorming some data-driven and writing projects for students for the coming year.

In my last post I announced that the IALE-North America meeting was up. Five days later, we made the decision to move from an in-person meeting in Toronto in May to a virtual meeting. It’s still going to be great; if you had a planned conference get cancelled, I encourage you to “attend” virtually to experience some great presentations (unfortunately we can’t accept new abstracts)!

March 2020

March has come in with more snow (!), which has made heading to our study site to check our hare collars a challenge. Nonetheless, folks are plugging away at projects. Patrick got helpful comments on two manuscript revisions, and Tegan and Travis have each submitted thesis chapters to journals.

This month brings the Science Atlantic meeting. Honours student Gabby is presenting there, and I will be one of the keynote speakers. It should be fun!

And, in other conference news, the schedule for the IALE-North America meetingis up. It was a bit of work this past month as Program Co-chair to finalize this, but we have a schedule. Check it out and consider attending!

February 2020

Well, January is over. What a month. #snowmageddon2020 was a lot of fun. It pooched Bella’s trip to Nova Scotia for the QAtCan STEM Colloquium, though she was able to present her work remotely.

Kudos to two alumni! Tegan submitted a second paper from her MSc to a journal for peer-review this month, and Rachel (with help from committee members) also has a thesis chapter submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

Tegan’s first paper is also out this month. Here’s the citation:

Padgett T, YF Wiersma. 2020. Arboreal macrolichen community composition and habitat associations. The Bryologist. 123(1), 64-74, https://doi.org/10.1639/0007-2745-123.1.064

January 2020

Happy new year! We started off the semester with a snow day, so let’s see what that means for the rest of the term! I’m looking forward to teaching Conservation in Practice with Bella (she’ll do 3 classes as part of a graduate teaching experience program), the Science Atlantic meeting in March, and preparing for the IALE-North America meeting in May, while also working on some writing. Oh, and some skiing when I’m not working…

Congratulations to Tegan, on her first paper acceptance (a chapter from her thesis which she completed last year)! This is the first paper from the LESA lab this year, and my first publication of the new decade! Woot! It’s coming out in the Bryologist; I’ll post a link when it’s out.

Padgett T, YF Wiersma. In press. Arboreal macrolichen community composition and habitat associations in boreal forested wetlands of Newfoundland, Canada. The Bryologist.

December 2019

The final paper of 2019 is out. This one uses our lichen model system to test the conservation planning question of how much is needed to represent all species (which was the topic of my PhD but at national-extents).

Wiersma YF, RT McMullin, DJH Sleep. 2019. Model systems to elucidate minimum requirements for protected areas networks. Scientific Reports 9, 19594. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56142-2

In honour of the holiday season – here is a photo of the “Christmas Lichen” (Cryptothecia rubrocincta), taken by yours truly this past summer, in Lettuce Lake State Park, Tampa, FL. Happy holidays to you and yours, from the LESA lab.

Matteo’s paper is now published online. Link below (it’s Open Access). 

Rizzuto M, Leroux SJ, Vander Wal E, Wiersma YF, Heckford TR, Balluffi-Fry J. Accepted. Patterns and potential drivers of intraspecific variability in the body C, N, P composition of a terrestrial consumer, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5880

November 2019

November kicks off with a paper acceptance. This one is led by Matteo from the Leroux lab. While not one of my grad students, Matteo is a member of the TERG team, of which I am also part. This paper is the first graduate student-led publication to come out of TERG. Congratulations Matteo!

The citation is:

Rizzuto M, Leroux SJ, Vander Wal E, Wiersma YF, Heckford TR, Balluffi-Fry J. Accepted. Patterns and potential drivers of intraspecific variability in the body C, N, P composition of a terrestrial consumer, the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5880

I had a fabulous time this month leading a really enthusiastic group of about 20 people from Nature NL on a hike to learn about lichen. Thanks Sara Jenkins for these amazing photos! It was a cold, wet morning but we had a great time and even introduced people to Boreal Felt Lichen!

Congratulations to Tom on passing his Honours thesis defense!

October 2019

This has been an exciting month and it’s only 2/3 over! Last week I got to take a film crew from River Road Films (Makers of “Wild Canada” and “Wild Canadian Year” productions for CBC’s “The Nature of Things). They are filming for the next CBC Nature of Things series “Wild Canadian Weather” (good call, coming to Newfoundland for that). I helped them gather some lichen footage in the “fog forest” for the episode on rain/fog. We drove through fog and heavy rain and then lugged gear out, just as the sun came out (ironic). It did cloud over and they have a few cinematic secrets they let me in on (I won’t tell). It was super fun living vicariously as a wildlife filmmaker for a day – as that’s what I wanted to be when I was 12. The series should be out next fall.

Tegan came back to campus for her convocation and got to celebrate with some family members. It was a beautiful fall day for pictures outside (as well as some lichen hunting). Thanks Travis and Tegan’s mom for the photos!

Bella and Travis are presenting their research at the Atlantic chapter of the Canadian Association of Geographers this month.

New publication from the lab – just accepted:

McMullin RT, YF Wiersma, JC Lendemer, SG Newmaster. In press. Risk assessment and conservation strategies for rare lichen species and communities threatened by sea-level rise in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Biological Conservation.

A fond farewell to Patrick (and his sidekick the famous Finnegan) who left at the beginning of this month on a road trip back to Ontario, where Patrick will be starting a PhD in May. Stay tuned for updates on Patrick as he puts the final pieces of his MSc thesis together!

September 2019

Happy academic new year!

This year kicks off with a publication – a short letter Troy and I wrote in response to a letter critiquing our piece in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment that came out last April. The citation is:

Wiersma YF, RT McMulllin. 2019. RESPONSE LETTER. Out with indicators: in with biodiversity (Response to letter from Janssen et al.) Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17: 371-373.

Welcome to a new resident of the lab – Katherine Flores. She is a Masters student in Environmental Science at the Grenfell campus, where she is co-supervised by Andre Arsenault and Michele Piercey-Normore. I am on her committee, and while she is on the St. John’s campus doing course work, she’ll be in my lab group.

… and as we welcome a new student, we’re preparing to say good-bye to another lab member. Patrick gave his exit seminar to a packed house, and got the great news a few hours later that one of his chapters had been accepted for publication. Way to go Patrick!

September is also the month for the Newfoundland (Mushroom) Foray. I went this year, and was thrilled to be joined by two current lab members along with two alumni. Check out this fine group of women in the pic below!

August 2019

Congrats to Tegan on submission of a chapter from her completed thesis as a manuscript for publication. Fingers crossed! Also, good luck to you as your start your new job at Terra Nova National Park this month.

In other lab news, Patrick was just at the ABLS/Botany meeting in Tucson, Arizona presenting his lichen predictive models. Congratulations to Patrick on being one of three “Honourable Mentions” for the A.J. Sharp Award for best student paper presentation! My collaborator Troy McMullin from the Canadian Museum of Nature was also there presenting some of our ideas on “old growth” vs. continuous forests.

I had a little work trip to Tampa, FL, and despite the heat and mostly indoor meetings, I got an hour of hiking in at a Bald Cyprus swamp. I added a new lichen for my “life list” that I was super excited about – Cryptothecia rubrocincta (aka “the Christmas lichen”).

July 2019

“Summer” kicked off with a week of field work with visiting colleague and lichenologist from the Canadian Museum of Nature, Dr. Troy McMullin (it actually was rather surprisingly summer-like weather). We had fun climbing the Hawke Hills, joined on various days by Tegan, Patrick, Felicity and Finnegan, where we discovered many cool species of arctic lichens. It will take some time to compile the data, but we plan to eventually get some kind of a publication out of it! Field pics (photo credits to Patrick) below.

Bella and Gabby are rockin’ it in Bloomfield – getting lots of home range data on our snowshoe hare (aka “the buns”). I spent a week with them and visiting volunteer Adam who was a trooper about our kalmia meadows and dense spruce that require rugby-like tactics to lay a transect through.

Congrats to Travis for submission of a chapter of his PhD to a journal. Fingers crossed! Patrick had a positive set of reviews come back on a thesis chapter – we’ll post more news when decisions are finalized…

And in graduate news, newly minted MSc Tegan just accepted a 6 month contract at Terra Nova National Park, where she is coordinating a park lichen survey with a focus on listed species. She starts August 1st and we’re glad to be keeping her in the province for a little while longer.

June 2019

Last week was convocation – congratulations to MES grad Matt Murphy. Sadly, I had to be in Terra Nova for the day, so I missed his ceremony and don’t have any pictures.

As part of convocation week, the School of Graduate Studies held an awards ceremony. Tegan (who is done but attending the Fall Convocation) was recognized as a Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies.

And in non-convocation awards, Travis received Nature NL’s “Wild Things” Scholarship in recognition of his volunteer efforts towards nature and conservation in the province. Here’s a story about his award.

May 2019

Huge congratulations to Tegan, who has now officially submitted her MSc and completed her degree!

Tegan is also busy in her part-time job with the NL Mosquito Project. She is up in Happy Valley-Goose Bay this week presenting at the Labrador Research Forum. Her poster was awarded second prize! Congrats!

Last month was a busy one – the Biology Grad Student Symposium at the beginning of the month was a huge success. Patrick, Bella and Travis all gave excellent talks, and Tegan contributed a poster. Our lab enjoyed hosting the keynote speaker, Joel Brown, and taking him out for a spectacular day in the field.

In other news, Bella is busy getting ready for her field season and Patrick and Travis are out in Terra Nova teaching the Boreal Ecology field course for two weeks. Yolanda is presenting some research in the community at one of St. John’s “Pint of Science” events. All we really need is some spring weather (it’s been snowing lately!).

April 2019

Congratulations to Bella, whose co-presentation at the Aldrich Conference late last month was awarded a “best presentation” award! Bella is also at the Benthic Ecology meeting this week (here in town), presenting a poster based on her project for her stats course.

Congratulations to Travis, who was Memorial University’s recipient of the 2019 ESRI Canada Graduate Scholarship!

Travis’ interview (in his role as CPAWS-NL Director) last month about the proposed Eagleridge Mine Development has been captured as a CBC News story. Read it here.

My Conservation in Practice Students (BIOL 4651) were interviewed on VOCM “Sunday Drive” about their term project. I had nothing to do with this – they inititated it all on their own! Very proud of these undergrads. They’ve made a website to go with the project – check it out here.

March 2019

Congratulations to Tegan on the submission of her MSc thesis for examination! The finish line is in sight!

Kudos to Patrick for hard work revising and resubmitting a manuscript that is also going to be a chapter in his thesis.

Bella will be co-presenting work done as part of her stats courses at the upcoming Aldrich Interdisciplinary Graduate Resarch Conference 

Last month the LESA Lab was on the road, making two presentations to local community/naturalist groups. This week we are furthering our public engagement with all kinds of media interatctions.

First off, PhD student Travis (wearing his CPAWS director hat) has a letter to the editor in the St. John’s Telegram. Read it here. The study he refers to is the little foray Bella, Tegan and I did late January. He was also interviewed on CBC Radio on the Central Morning show.

There will be more “media splashes” in the coming days. Stay tuned – I will post them as they go live…

McMullin RT, YF Wiersma. 2019. Out with OLDgrowth, in with ecological continNEWity: new perspectives on forest conservation Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

February 2019

The LESA Lab is hitting the road with public talks this month! I’m giving a talk this month the the Wildflower Society of Newfoundland and Labrador (Tuesday Feb. 12, 7:30 at the Botanical Gardens, if you are in town). They told me they were tired of wildflower talks and wanted to learn about lichens… The week following, Tegan is talking about her MSc work with the folks at Nature Newfoundland (Thursday Feb. 21, 7:30 pm, location TBA).

Congratulations to Bella on a successful first committee meeting!

We had a couple of end-of-month field excursions last month. Patrick and Travis travelled to Terra Nova and Conne River for a lichen workshop right at the end of January, and Tegan, Bella and I spent a wintery day looking for boreal felt lichen on the Avalon. Below are a few pictures.

In publishing news; two papers I was involved with have moved to “in press”. Links to pre-prints/re-prints will be coming soon.

1. Drever CR, C Hutchison, MC Dever, D Fortin, CA Johnson, YF Wiersma. 2019. Conservation through co-occurrence: woodland caribou as a focal species for boreal biodiversity. Biological Conservation. In press.
2. Lukyanenko R, J Parsons, YF Wiersma, M Maddah. 2019. Expecting the unexpected: effects of data collection design choice on the quality of crowdsourced user-generated content. Management Information Systems Quarterly. In press.

January 2019

Happy new year! We’re all just getting back in the groove after a nice break. Tegan and Travis had some exciting bird, insect and lichen sightings on their trip to Mexico over the break (and they brought back really good coffee!).

I’m teaching two courses – Conservation in Practice and the Environmental Science seminar. It should be a busy winter.

Here’s a reprint of my first publication of 2019 – a letter in Diversity and Distributions.

Best of all – we have loads of snow!

December 2018

There is lots of exciting lab news to announce:

November 2018

In lab news, congratulations to Travis and Patrick who contributed to organizing the Atlantic Society of Fish and Wildlife Biologists Annual symposium. They both presented papers, as did Tegan, who awarded 2nd prize for best talk (pretty cool to see a lichens & wetlands talk win at a wildlife meeting!)

In other news, lab alumna Rachel Wigle just landed a full-time job that is Biology related (though not in ecology). She is working on Quality Assurance in a greenhouse with Aphira. Pretty cool to have a former student get hired in the marijuana industry within two weeks of it being legalized here in Canada…

In other conference news, I am participating indirectly in the big Caribou Confab in Ottawa; I’m a co-author on a paper led by Ronnie Drever of the Natural Conservancy, which was presented by Chantal Hutchison.

Next week we will say good-bye to our “Ghost-Doc” Carly Ziter who is off to start a tenure-track position at Concordia. I’m sure she will do some awesome trailblazing to advance the field of urban landscape ecology in Canada!

In my role as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Ecology, I recently wrote a blog post about one of the papers I handled. “Holiday snapshots can help us to understand conservation sites“

October 2018

Big congrats to Rachel Wigle, who passed her MSc examination right at the end of last month!

I had the opportunity take part in the NL Mushroom (and lichen) Foray at the end of the month, which was a lot of fun.

September 2018

Happy Academic New Year! Here’s a quote for everyone starting their school year from the author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

This semester we welcome a new lab member, Bella Richmond, who is starting an MSc and joining the TERG project.

Here’s a link to the first pub of the 2018-2019 Academic New year. It was accepted almost a year ago, but only just came out in the journal (sometimes there is quite a backlog…). Lead author is LESA Lab Alumnus Shad Mahlum, now doing his PhD in Norway. It was published in Restoration Ecology and also features my colleagues Dave Cote (DFO) and Blair Adams (Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Fisheries and Land Resources).

August 2018

It must be dog days of August, as I am late updating the website. Here are recent news items from the lab (quite a lot for what’s assumed to be a slow month):

July 2018

Two big announcements from the end of last month:

1. Congrats to Travis on passing his PhD comprehensive exam!
2. Good bye and good luck to Rachel, who left us at the end of June to return home to Ontario. She has a thesis draft off to her committee and should be submitting it for examination soon.

In other news, Tegan and Patrick are making good progress on their field work. Yolanda has been scoping out some sites for fall field work, and Travis will head out to Terra Nova soon to help with snowshoe hare telemetry.

June 2018

Field work is underway despite the colder weather we’ve had for end May/early June.

Congrats to Patrick on his convocation for his BSc last week!

Late last month I ran a workshop advising scientists on how to collaborate effectively with social scientists as part of the ACCESS meeting. A web page with workshop info and resources for anyone else who might be interested is here.

May 2018

The teaching term is over (though I am teaching a grad GIS course this summer) and that means FIELD WORK! Yay!! Patrick and I got an early start (last week’s nice weather motivated us) and are running a little experiment locally which involves more “fake lichens” (a neat little tool we developed for Rebecca’s Honours thesis). It’s a fun exercise and will give him some good estimates of his sampling error rates.

Field season also means new field personnel. Welcome back to John , who is joing the LESA lab as a summer student for the second year in a row. Also welcome to Brian, our new field assistant. Watch for pictures and news coming soon!

May gets to a busy start with the Canadian Society of Zoology meeting here on campus. Travis is presenting a talk, as are colleagues from across the department. The following week, a crew of us from the TERG project will head up to Terra Nova National Park for their annual “Research Day”.

And in a BIG milestone, Rachel is giving her MSc exit seminar this month! She is nearly done writing up and is doing her final presentation to the Department on May 9. Come on by if you want to here “A tale of two trees” (lichen community patterns on yellow birch and balsam fir on the Avalon Peninsua). Her research is highlighted in a recent article in the Gazette. You can read it here.

April 2018

HUGE congratulations to Tegan, who was awarded the Culberson and Hale Award from the American Bryological and Lichenological Society. Nicely done Tegan!

April means two of my favourite events of the whole year are upon us. Sadly, this year they overlap, so I will miss one of them.

The first is the “Landscapades” (as I call them) – officially the annual conferecne of the US Regional Association of the International Associaton of Landscape Ecology. This year the meeting is in Chicago. I’m hosting a sympoisum on “Experimental Landscape Ecology”, and Tegan is presenting her chapter 1 work. Read all about the meeting here.

While Tegan and I are off in the Windy City, the rest of the folks will get to attend the Biology Grad Student Symposium. Rachel is giving a talk, and Travis is presenting a poster. It should be a great day – check out the details here.

Also, congratulations to Molly M; a high school student I mentored for her independent Biology project for the IB program. Her work has been accepted for publication in Evansia.

March 2018

February 2018

Travis recently presented his work at a meeting of Nature Newfoundland. Read about the event here – this is an annual showcase of graduate student research that Nature NL hosts. Nice job, Travis!

A couple of papers accepted late last year just officially went in print this month. The first is in Landscape Ecology. You can find it here (it’s open access).

Wiersma YF, RT McMullin. Is it common to be rare on the landscape? 2018. A test using a novel model system. Landscape Ecology 33: 183-195

The other is in Biodiversity and Conservation. Contact me for a PDF.

Wiersma YF and DJH Sleep. 2018. The effect of target setting on conservation in Canada’s boreal: what is the right amount of area to protect? Biodiversity and Conservation 27:733-748

January 2018

Happy new year! 2017 was a productive year for the LESA Lab, some great field work got done by Rachel, Tegan and Travis – we look forward to seeing results as they work on their analysis.

I managed to get a few papers out last year, but counting on my grad students to carry the torch this year – at least for the first part of the year! I’ll be busy this winter teaching two 4th year courses, Landscape Ecology and Conservation in Practice.

Also, a welcome to new MSc student Patrick Lauriault. His profile should be up soon.

Congrats to Tegan, on acceptance of her abstract to the upcoming US-IALE (US Regional Association of the International Association of Landscape Ecology) meeting. She and I will be travelling to Chicago in early April to participate in the meeting.

Here’s to another great year of landscape ecology!

December 2017

Congrats to grad students Tegan and Matt for completion of this semester’s course work. Tegan is now all done course work, while Matt has a few more to go.

Kudos to Travis for sharing our TERG resarch (involving me, Shawn Leroux, Eric Vander Wal, and Shawn’s student Matteo) at last month’s Geomatics Atlantic Conference.

And, a final paper acceptance for 2017 just came through… I’m really proud of this one!

Wiersma YF, RT McMullin. Is it common to be rare on the landscape? A test using a novel model system. Landscape Ecology. DOI: 10.1007/s10980-017-0599-3

November 2017

November kicks off with two papers accepted… not bad!

First off – congrats to alumnus Shad Mahlum who took the time and put in the effort to do a additional analysis post MSc (effectively equivalent to another thesis chapter), which we published in Restoration Ecology. This paper looked at data on fish movement across 4 restored culverts in Terra Nova National park. We compared how one would intrepret “success” with different metrics and using a full BACI (before-after-control-impact) vs. a B-A or C-I comparison.

Mahlum S, D Cote, YF Wiersma, C Pennell, B Adams. Accepted. Does restoration work? It depends on how we measure success. Restoration Ecology.

Also my colleague Darren Sleep (NCASI) and I had a paper accepted from a project we’ve been chipping away at for awhile. We did some simulation modelling to assess how much protected area would need to be allocated in the boreal forest ecozone under different target scenarios.

Wiersma YF and DJH Sleep. Accepted. The effect of target setting on conservation in Canada’s boreal: what is the right amount of area to protect? Biodiversity and Conservation.

October 2017

The TERG crew is having great success catching hare in and around Terra Nova! Nine caught so far. We now have at least one VHF collared hare in three of our four grids. Woo hoo! As a Thanksgiving day bonus, Tegan (who came up to help out) found a rare blue felt lichen (Degelia plumbea).

Rachel wrapped up her field work (for good) and is now on to lab work – anlaysing bark pH and aging tree cores.

Travis and Tegan, along with fellow grad students on the TERG project are off to Terra Nova to do some snowshoe hare trapping. Hopefully we catch a few more bunnies this time of year! Too bad wild bunnies aren’t as amendable to capture as domestic ones.

And in publication news this month, two papers from this lab have been recently accepted. Watch this space for links to the post-prints, when they become available. Congtats to fomer LESA lab student Matt on his first publication (carried out with my colleague Max Liboiron) which documents a new protocol for monitoring marine debris on rocky coastlines.

McWilliams M, M Liboiron, YF Wiersma. In press. Rocky shoreline protocols miss microplastics in marine debris surveys (Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador). Marine Pollution Bulletin doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.10.018.

Also congrats to Honours alumna Rebecca on her first pub! We combined her honours work (which compared methods to survey rare species) with extensive survey work by Rachel, Tegan and I last fall, along with data from our colleages Blair and Dave to do this paper.

Bowering R, R Wigle, T Padgett, B Adams, D Cote, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Searching for rare species: a comparison of two methods for detecting and estimating abundance. Forest Ecology and Management doi: /10.1016/j.foreco.2017.10.016.

September 2017

Happy Academic New Year!

Tegan has wrapped up her field work and Travis finsihed up a large amount of plant survey work. He’ll head out this fall to help with snowshoe hare live trapping, and Rachel and I are going out to do a few lichen surveys locally this fall.

In publication news, my colleagues Shawn Leroux and Eric Vander Wal, with a pile of grad students, have a paper accepted in Ecology Letters on our Ecological Stoichiometry work! Details to follow.

As well, Miguel’s second paper is now out in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

Mejías M, DB Wingate, J Madeiros, YF Wiersma, GJ Robertson. 2017. Nest-cavity selection and nesting success of Bermuda White-Tailed Tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus catesbyi). The Wilson Journal of Ornithology 129: 586-599.

Also, a blog post I wrote for the “Applied Ecologist” blog is up. It’s about restoration of connectivity and highlights a paper I handled as AE for the Journal of Applied Ecologists. You can read the post here.

July 2017

New paper just out this month:

McMullin RT, YF Wiersma. 2017. Lichens and allied fungi of Salmonier Nature Park, Newfoundland. The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 144: 357-369.

Field work is well underway. Here are a few photos from the past month. the first mosaic is from Tegan’s project (photo credits: Tegan and John) and the second mosaic is Rachel’s project (photo credits: Rachel and Patrick). Hover your mouse over the photos to see captions.

June 2017

New paper out this month:

McMullin RT, D Ure, M Smith, H Clapp, YF Wiersma. 2017. Ten years of lichen monitoring for air quality and ecological integrity at Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site. Ecological Indicators 81: 214-221.

It is starting to look a little bit spring-like around here. Rachel and Patrick are rocking away at their field work. Tegan and John also hit the ground running and will be heading out soon for a longer road trip to explore some new field sites.

I spent a day late last month in Terra Nova National Park with two members of the TERG project, to present our progress to our Parks Canada partners. We also tromped around a couple of the hare grids (and found evidence of hare activity).

In publication news, one of Miguel’s papers on the Distribution and at-sea behaviour of Bermudan White-tailed tropicbirds is out in the Journal of Field Ornithology. You can read it here.

May 2017

New paper just out in Endangered Species Research!

Gomez C, J Lawson, A-L Kouwenberg, H Moors-Murphy, A Buren, C Fuentes-Yaco, E Marotte, YF Wiersma, T Wimmer. 2017. Predicted distribution of whales at risk: identifying priority areas to enhance cetacean monitoring in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Endangered Species Research 32: 437-458.

Congratulations to Honours student Rebecca Bowering who successfully defended her thesis at the end of last month.

Teaching term is over and we are busy gearing up for a busy field season. We welcome Patrick and John to the lab as our new summer field assistants!

Travis is off to the CSEE meeting this month – where he is presenting two posters – one on his BC work (before he got here) and one on some stats analysis he did last fall. Have fun in Victoria, Travis!

The annual Biology Graduate Student Symposium last month was a great success. Rachel and Travis both presented posters and Travis won best photo in the “Marine” cateogry.

April 2017

Congratulations to LESA Lab Alumnus Miguel, whose second chapter of his thesis has been accepted for publication. The citation is below; we are told it will be coming out in the June issue.

Mejías MA, YF Wiersma, DB Wingate, JL Madeiros. Accepted. Non-breeding distribution and at-sea behavior of Bermudan-origin White-tailed Tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus catesbyi) in the North Atlantic. Journal of Field Ornithology

The full-text version of the latest paper from the LESA Lab is now availalbe online. Check it out via the link below:

LeClerc E, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Assessing post-industrial land cover change at the Pine Point mine, NWT, Canada using multi-temporal Landsat analysis and landscape metrics. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.

We enjoyed hosting Carly Ziter for the end of March – she is finishing up her PhD at University of Wisconsin-Madison under Dr. Monica Turner. She will be moving out here in about a year and was visiting to explore post-doc options. We’re looking forward to further interesting discussions!

March 2017

Congratulations to lab alumna Emma LeClerc. The second paper from her MA has been accepted for publication. Two papers out of a very interdisicplinary MA (one using oral history and map biography that she published with her co-supervisor Dr. Keeling) – and the citation below (technical remote sensing/landscape ecology exercise) with me!

LeClerc E, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Assessing post-industrial land cover change at the Pine Point mine, NWT, Canada using multi-temporal Landsat analysis and landscape metrics. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.

In other news, a paper I was involved in (with colleagues at DFO) has been recently accepted. Here’s the citaiton:

Gomez C, J Lawson, A-L Kouwenberg, H Moors-Murphy, A Buren, C Fuentes-Yaco, E Marotte, YF Wiersma, T Wimmer. Accepted. Predicted distribution of whales at risk: identifying priority areas to enhance cetacean monitoring in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Endangered Species Research.

February 2017

Rachel, Tegan and I are busy slowly working through some lichen specimens in the herbarium which were collected in 1967 and are unidentified. We got curious about the collectors, so we wrote an article, which came out this week in Omphalina (the publication of the NL Foray). Thanks to everyone who helped out with gathering/taking images for the article.

We are hiring some summer field assistants! (at least two of them). One will be open only to students holding an NSERC USRA or a Memorial University USSIP or SURA. Students should apply to USRA/SURA/USSIP first, then my lab. The other will be open to undergrads in general. The first job advertisement is here.

January 2017

Happy new year! The past year was a productive one. In 2016 we welcomed two new students (Travis and Rachel) and said good bye to Emilie who took a job with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Add to that a LOT of field work, a workshop (for me) in Germany and a few publications and it was a good year.

Congratulations to Miguel Mejias, who passed his MSc examination and officially completed his degree this month.

The new year is a time for lists about the past year. In that vein, an editorial I wrote with colleagues Dr. Parsons and Dr. Lukyanenko in Conservation Biology was listed as one of the top accessed articles in that journal of 2016. Pretty cool!

Welcome to our newest student, MSc candidate Tegan Padgett. Check out her profile under “Current Personnel” tab.

December 2016

Just got word that an editorial I wrote with colleagues Dr. Parsons and Dr. Lukyanenko in Conservation Biology was listed as one of the top accessed articles in that journal of 2016. Pretty cool!

My colleague Dr. Troy McMullin (who worked as a post-doctoral RA in the lab last year, and is now lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature) and I recently had a paper accepted. This was a “side project” during his time here in Fall 2015, but it got us a nice pub!

McMullin RT, YF Wiersma. Accepted. Lichens and allied fungi of Salmonier Nature Park, Newfoundland. The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society.

A recent story in the Memorial University Gazette features work that myself and 3 colleagues are doing on the provincial Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Advisory Council. Read it here.

November 2016

Congratulations to Miguel, whose first chapter of his thesis “Nest-cavity selection and nesting success of Bermudian White-tailed Tropicbirds (Phaethon lepturus catesbyi)” has been accepted for publication in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology!

A paper with my former PhD student (now tenure-track prof at U Sask), Roman Lukyanenko, my colleague Jeff Parsons, and colleagues in Germany has been accepted by the Journal of the Association of Information Systems.

Welcome to the newest member of the LESA Lab  – Tegan Padgett. She’ll be working as an RA with me for 2 months before starting her MSc in January. Her profile will be up soon.

Congrats to Miguel whose thesis has been approved to go to examination. He’ll be delivering his exit seminar later this month.

October 2016

A paper I wrote a few years ago with John Sandlos on the topic of ecological baselines got nicely profiled in a JSTOR blog post by Matthew Wills. Check it out!

The latest issue of The Lichenologist features is a tribute to Irwin Brodo, who was curator of lichenology at the Canadian Museum of Nature for many years. I played a small part in one of the articles in the issue, citation below.

McMullin RT, LL Bennett, OJ Bjorgan, DA Bourque, CJ Burke, MA Clarke, MK Gutgesell, PL Krawiec, R Malyon, A Mantione, AT Piotrowski, NY Tam, AC Van Natto, YF Wiersma, SG Newmaster. 2016. Impact of air pollution and population density on lichen diversity in the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve. The Lichenologist 48(5): 593-605.

September 2016

Happy Academic New year! I’m on a mini-sabbatical, so will be hunkered down writing up some papers and grants, with forays to the field interspersed.

This fall we are welcoming a new MSc student, Rachel Wigle – watch for her profile on the lab personnel page.

A new paper is out that I co-authored with my colleague Dr. Darren Sleep of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvment.

August 2016

It was “dog days” of August at the LESA lab – finishing up field work, and taking some vacation time.

July 2016

I spent a fun 5 days helping the TERG crew with some vegetation sampling. Here’s the crew after completion of the entire plot!

A paper I am a co-author on with colleagues Roman Lukayanenko (recently moved from Florida International University to University of Saskatchewan), Renee Sieber (McGill), M. Maddah (FIU) and Jeff Parsons (Memorial) is out at the following location:

Lukyanenko R, J Parsons, YF Wiersma, R Sieber, M Maddah. 2016. Participatory design for user-generated content systems: understanding the challenges and moving forward. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 28(1): Article 2.

Travis has updated the TERG (Terrestrial Ecology Research Group) site. Check it out here. His bio is not up on my site yet, but he’s hit the ground running with field work, so we can forgive that.

This month Memorial is hosting the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution meeting. It should be a great event! Check out the full program here.

In funding news, a project I was a co-applicant on (with colleagues from across Atlantic Canada, led by Dr. Karen Harper at Dalhousie) has been awarded funding under the Atlantic Ecosystem Initiative. Watch this space for an advertisement for a grad student position!

June 2016

Just released from embargo today (June 13) – a paper in Nature Communications which I helped out with. Lead authors are colleagues from my sabbatical at the Technical University of Munich. You can access the paper here.

Congratulations to Honours student Rachel Winsor on her convocation!

Congratulations to Christina Wiseman, one of the students in BIOL 4405 (my Landsacpe Ecology course). Christina was awarded the Pro Vice-Chancellor’s Prize, which recognized her essay “Landscape Fragmentation: the changing study and use of the term as technoclogies evolve” as the winning essay in a university-wide competition.

The last week of May featured a bit of a flurry of paper acceptances, which I didn’t have time to share here, so I’ll start June off by announcing the following papers which have been accepted and which should be appearing in the respective journals in the weeks/months ahead.

1. Lukyanenko R, J Parsons, YF Wiersma, R Sieber, M Maddah. Accepted. Participatory design for user-generated content systems: understanding the challenges and moving forward. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems.
2. McMullin RT, LL Bennett, OJ Bjorgan, DA Bourque, CJ Burke, MA Clarke, MK Gutgesell, PL Krawiec, R Malyon, A Mantione, AT Piotrowski, NY Tam, AC Van Natto, YF Wiersma, SG Newmaster. Accepted. Impact of air pollution and population density on lichen diversity in the Niagara Escarpment World Biosphere Reserve. The Lichenologist.
3. Wiersma YF, DJH Sleep. Accepted. No “one size fits all”: A review of how definitions and concepts in systematic conservation planning are applied in the real world. The Forestry Chronicle.

In other news, Honours student Rebecca has started some field work – I’ll try to get some pictures up, and the TERG crew is busy setting up their field sites.

I’m also off to Germany this month, to Stuttgart and the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) for a workshop on Citizen Science with my colleague Dr. Wachinger, who was a visiting researcher in my lab last fall.

May 2016

Welcome to our newest graduate student, Travis Heckford (MSc student) who will be part of the TERG Team. His profile should be up pretty soon. In the meantime you can peruse his personal website here.

I also have two undergraduates joining the lab this summer. Olga Trela is doing a USRA in my lab for half the summer and Rebecca Bowering just started her Honours research with me. Look for their profiles on my “people” page soon.

An editorial in Conservation Biology that I co-authored with my colleagues Roman Lukyanenko and Jeff Parsons is now out in an issue of Conservation Biology that also contains a special section on Citizen Science, which is worth checking out. The citation is:

As AE for Journal of Applied Ecology, I was asked to do a blog post related to a recent paper I handled on seagrass habitat modelling. You can read it here.

Woot! I got out of the office this month! It wasn’t a lot (mostly a lot of driving and a day meeting with Terra Nova parks folks) but me and da b’ys (TERG grad students) did get to do some preliminary scoping of field sites, see what a hare grid looks like, and introduce Matteo and Travis to boreal vegetation.

April 2016

This month was the Biology Graduate Students Symposium. It’s a one-day event designed to let students showcase their research. I always look forward to it as it’s such a great event and gives me a chance to hear about all the cool research going on. This year was no exception. Kudos to the organizing committee on another successful symposium. A highlight for me this year was that one of my students, Miguel, was voted for the Joe Brown People’s Choice Award for best talk. This rather, um, phallic, trophy gets to sit in the lab for the whole year before being bestowed on next year’s winner (for the curious, that is a bone from a seal bacculum – the trophies are all handmade and reflective of Newfoundland’s distinctive fauna). Congrats Miguel!

Matt is starting the month by travelling to beautiful Asheville, North Carolina to present his Fogo Island work to landscape ecologists at the US-IALE meeting. The conference website is here and if (like me) you can’t be there, you can follow the Tweeters using the #usiale2016 hashtag.

Congrats to PhD student Emilie Kissler who has been offered a permanent position with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. She’ll soon be relocating to Timmins, in northern Ontario.

March 2016

Here’s a link to an article in the St. John’s Telegram (March 15) about Dr. Troy McMullin’s work, done while he was working here last October.

Happy International Women’s Day (March 8th). Several editors of Journal of Applied Ecology (including me) have contributed to a blog post on perspectives of women in science. Check it out here.

My colleagues Roman Lukyanenko and Jeff Parsons and I have had an editorial on the topic of data quality and citizen science accepted for a forthcoming issue of Conservation Biology. The citation is:

Lukyanenko R, J Parsons, YF Wiersma. 2016. Emerging programs of data quality in citizen science. Conservation Biology DOI 10.1111/cobi.12706

Congrats to Matt on submission of his first article to a peer-reviewed journal. He took the lead on writing up a small summer project he did with Dr. Liboiron and I on Fogo last summer.

I’m part of a forthcoming review article about the value of Landscape Ecology for policy-making, coming out in BioScience. The citation is:

Mayer AL, B Buma, A Davis, SA Gagné, EL Loudermilk, R Scheller, F Schmiegelow, YF Wiersma, J Franklin. In press. How landscape ecology informs global land change science and policy. BioScience

February 2016

My colleagues Roman Lukyanenko and Jeff Parsons and I have had an editorial on the topic of data quality and citizen science accepted for a forthcoming issue of Conservation Biology. Citation information will be posted here soon.

My colleagues at DFO are hiring for two GIS positions – please check this link for the job description.

Matt is off to beautiful Banff in the first week of February for a week-long MEOPeer session.

January 2016

Happy new year! Looking back, I would say 2015 was a pretty successful year in the lab. Wewelcomed two new students (Krista and Matt; both of whom are making great progress on their papers) and hosted 3 visiting researchers (Jennifer from U Manitoba last April and Dr. Wachinger from the University of Stuttgart and lichenologist Dr. McMullin in the fall). We also saw the successful completion of Emma’s MA thesis and Rachel’s Honours thesis. Top that off with some successful grants and publications and it’s been a good year. I’m sure 2016 will bring more exciting activity in the LESA Lab.

Please take note of the event below, hosted by my collaborator Dr. Max Liboiron

Marine Plastics in Newfoundland Fish and Ecosystems: A Public Meeting

Thursday, January 21

7-8:30pm

Petty Harbour Recreation Center

Cribbies Road, off Main Road next to the War Memorial

While plastics have been found in every ocean in the world, the exact amounts and effects of plastic pollution in Newfoundland are unknown.

A team of research at MUN have started a long-term study of marine plastics in Newfoundland by collecting cod guts from the September 2015 food fishery to see of cod are eating plastics. They will present their findings at this public meeting, discuss the issue of marine plastics more broadly, and collect input from attendees about the types of concerns they have around plastic pollution in Newfoundland to direct future research.

Everyone is welcome to attend!

 For more information, contact project leaders at MUN: Dr. Max Liboiron mliboiron@mun.ca (Sociology & Environmental Sciences) & Dr. Charles Mather cmather@mun.ca (Geography)

December 2015

December has been a month full of accomplishments and achievements in the lab. What a great way to end 2015!

November 2015

The month is off to a busy start. My colleages Dr. Max Liboiron, Dr. Jeffrey Parsons, and I, together with MES student Krista, ran a successful beach clean up and data collection for our work on citizen science and marine plastics.

Yolanda spent the better part of the first week of November in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, chairing WERAC meetings. It was a productive meeting! The highlight was a public open house/meet and greet at the Labrador North Chamber of Commerce.

October 2015

My visiting colleague, Dr. Gisela Wachinger, from the University of Stuttgart, Germany are having some productive focus groups and interviews with NLNature.com users. I am also learning a lot about Germany’s newest national park, Schwartzwald (Black Forest) and we are working to develop a proposal for future collaborations examining issues and conflicts in and around national parks; comparing Canadian and German case studies.

This month features a second visiting researcher to the lab, Dr. Troy McMullin, a lichenologist from the University of Guelph. He and I are collaborating to make links between boreal forest landscape ecology and lichenology. You can see some pictures of his trip here.

September 2015

HAPPY ACADEMIC NEW YEAR!!

We are happy to see Matt safely back from his 4 months of field work on Fogo. He’s got lots of great data and maps. Also we are happy to welcome back Andrew from his work term and adventures in Labrador – he’ll be busy finishing up his major paper this term.

We’re also welcoming our newsest LESA Lab member – Krista Byrne-Puumula, who is doing an MES related to citizen science and marine plastics (co-supervised by Dr. Max Liboiron).

Also a warm welcome to visiting research, Dr. Gisela Wachinger, from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. She and I are collaborating on research with our NLNature.com users to find out why they use the site, and solicit ideas for ways to make the site better. We’re also working to develop a proposal for future collaborations examining issues and conflicts in and around national parks; comparing Canadian and German case studies.

In funding news, my colleagues Dr. Leroux, Dr. Vander Wal and I recieved a grant from MITACS to support 3 students in our Terrestrial Ecology Research Group.

August 2015

Check out the new website for a collaborative research group in Terrestrial Ecology that I am a part of! Visit it here.

Summer is always a bit of a blur of research activities and writing, plus squeezing in some fun and R & R.

I recently got back from a few days on Fogo with my colleague Max – we went to visit Matt in the field. We got out on a fishing boat to check cod pots, and worked out a new beach survey protocol (dubbed “the Fogo protocol”) to survey for marine microplastics on rocky beaches. We also visited one of the 4 corners of the earth.

I also got out to my lichen site a few times and had awesome help from WISE summer student Rebecca.

And, in a few of the sunny days we had, I caught some rays and worked on some papers.

Finally, a special issue on the topic of “Protected Areas and Sustainable Forest Management” which I edited is out in Conservation and Society. See the complete Table of Contents here.

July 2015

Yikes, it’s the middle of July and I’ve not updated the website. Things must be busy! Students are all at work (see Andrew’s work term guest blog here) or in the field. Matt is still up on Fogo and a team just got back from two weeks of hard work on the northern Peninsula. Matt sent this awesome photo from Fogo…

I was recently in Portland, Oregon for the IALE World Congress. It was great. I guess between co-ordinating field work, getting ready for the congress and travelling, I have not updated here. I saw lots of great talks from all over the world, and it seemed that every Canadian landscape ecologist was there too. In honour of hard-working Canucks in the US, here’s a photo of a sculpture just outside the hotel in Portland.

In publishing news – the issue of ACE-ECO with Karla’s paper is officially rolled out (though her article was online already over a month ago). The full issue is here.

As well, a special issue on the topic of “Protected Areas and Sustainable Forest Management” which I edited is out in Conservation and Society. See the complete Table of Contents here.

June 2015

We have a guest post from MES Student Andrew, on his Co-op Work term experience. Read it here.

Yolanda has been appointed an Associate Editor at the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology. I’m looking forward to seeing some interesting manuscripts cross my desk!

If any Newfoundland bird watchers want to help with a Shorebird Survey, Environment Canada/CPAWS are looking for your help. See ad below for details.

May 2015

Lab alumna Nyssa Van Vierssen Trip’s thesis work is now published. She’ll be starting her PhD in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University this September where she’ll work with Dr. Justin Podur.

Van Vierssen Trip N, YF Wiersma. 2015. A comparison of All-Terrain Vehcile (ATV) trail impacts on boreal habitats across scales. Natural Areas Journal 35(2): 266-278

The first of May brought some good-byes… a few shorter, a few longer.

We’re sad to say good-bye to our new friend and colleague Jennifer Doering, who visited the LESA Lab for a couple of weeks from the University of Manitoba to learn some landscape ecology and spatial analysis techniques to intergrate with her Masters research on genetic variability in lichens. You can read a bit about Jennifer’s experience by clicking here.

Matt left for his 4 month field work on Fogo Island. Looking forward to hearing about his adventures… perhaps we will get him to guest blog from out there.

Andrew will also be taking some time away from the LESA Lab while he does his 4 month co-op work term with Sikumiut Environmental Management. It sounds like he will have some neat travel up to Labrador and will be picking up some new skills along the way.

April 2015

The end of April is lichen-themed! We’re please to welcome MSc student Jennifer Doering, from the University of Manitoba as a visiting grad student for 2 weeks. As well, Andrew is busy experimenting with a hyperspectral camera for lichen research.

Congrats to lab alumna Karla, who has a paper (based on her honours thesis) accepted in Avian Conservation and Ecology-Écologie et conservation des oiseaux. The citation is:

Letto KR, YF Wiersma, J Brazil, B Rodrigues. 2015. Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) population increases in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland – evidence for habitat saturation? Avian Conservation and Ecology 10(1) art. 4 [online]

MSc(Env) student Matt, his co-supervisor Max Liboiron and I had a productive meeting at the end of the past month as part of the Fogo Island project. We had a participatory citizen science meeting with fishermen where we collaboratively defined our research question and developed a data sampling strategy.

March 2015

Congrats to lab alumna Karla, who has a paper (based on her honours thesis) accepted in Avian Conservation and Ecology-Écologie et conservation des oiseaux. The citation is:

Letto KR, YF Wiersma, J Brazil, B Rodrigues. Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) population increases in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland – evidence for habitat saturation? Avian Conservation and Ecology.

Good news for my colleagues Dr. Vander Wal, Dr. Leroux, and I. We’ve each been awarded a research grant to start some integrated research encompassing population, ecosystem and landscape ecology in boreal Newfoundland.

The first paper based on sightings from nlnature.com is out. This is based on a sighting of a new mosquito species to the province, which was made by a member at nlnature.com. Entomologists at Memorial University confirmed it, and have published the report of this new occurrence in The Canadian Entomologist. Read it here.

The is a lot going on this month related to the Fogo Island project. Matt and I are heading to Fogo at the end of the month with Matt’s co-supervisor Max Liboiron and guest visitor Pheobe Sengers for a meeting with the fishermen to develop research quesitons further.

Phoebe is on campus this month and doing several events related to Change Islands (next door neighbour of Fogo). Read about them here.

February 2015

Yolanda was elected co-chair of WERAC (Wilderness and Ecological Reserves Advisory Council) this month. Here’s the press release.

January 2015

Happy new year from the LESA Lab!

We’re starting the new year with a new student – welcome to Matt, the newest grad student in the lab! Read his bio here!

Emma’s paper on land use in Pine Point, NWT “From cutlines to traplines: post-land use at the Pine Point mine” published in The Extractive Industries and Society is available free online until March 5, 2015. Download it here.

Yolanda is giving a workshop on Citizen Science at the MEOPAR-Sponsored symposium on Knowlege Mobilization at the end of this month.

Roman’s paper is out in Information Systems Research… the first article of the last issue of 2014  – access it here.

December 2014

The Fogo project is featured in the University’s “Face Forward” campaign. Check it out here.

A paper led by recent PhD grad Roman is out in a top-leve Information System journal. Check it out here.

Yolanda is attending the Nature Conservancy Canada launch of the Labrador Nature Atlas. The launch is a 3-part tour hitting Goose Bay, Corner Brook and St. John’s. You can read more here.

November 2014

Congratulations to MES student Andrew Roberts, who was presented with this year’s CIG-NL Geomatics Scholarship at the Geomatics Atlantic meeting this month!

It’s a busy month for presentations… Yolanda presented work completed with recent PhD grad Roman Lukyanenko at the Canadian Institute of Geomatics NL meeting this month, and is presenting on forestry-themed research in the Biology department at the Canadian Institute of Foresters – NL meeting later this month. Between those she is off on a quick trip to Nova Scotia to participate in the Fishermen’s Forum.

We had a very successful “Oceans of Data” workshop last month. Read all about it here. Now it’s time for report writing and thinking about how to maximize all the great new connections and potential collaborations made.

October 2014

Congratulatoins to MES student Andrew Roberts, recipient of this year’s CIG-NL Geomatics Scholarship!

It’s the countdown to the “Oceans of Data” workshop on ocean themed citizen science and ocean literacy that I am hosting later this month. Read all about it here.

MA student Emma LeClerc has her first paper out! It’s based on oral interviews and mapping she did in Fort Resolution, NWT on the topic of the abandoned Pine Point Mine and forms the “land use” chapter of her thesis. You can find the paper here.

Alumus Shad Mahlum’s paper is now up on the “In Press” and formatted and looking spiffy in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. Click here for the PDF (if you have access to the journal, otherwise go to Shad or my profile on Research Gate to get post-prints). I was recently alerted to the fact that his first paper in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society (access it here) was the “most viewed” article of that issue. Congratulations Shad!

September 2014

Happy academic new year! September always feels like a fresh start! Here in the LESA Lab we are welcoming new MES student Andrew Roberts – his profile should be up on the Students page soon.

Alumus Shad Mahlum’s paper is now up on the “Just in” page of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. Click here for the PDF.

In lab alumni news – Megan Lafferty’s contract with the Nature Conservancy has been extended into 2015 so we get to keep her on the Rock for another year.  Click here to read an article in the local paper about her summer field work. Dr. Julie Andersen has started a job with Water Management in Norway, and Shad Mahlum has been offered a position in a fisheries research centre at University Miljo (also, by coincidence, in Norway). As well, Dr. Lukyanenko started a tenure-track position at Florida International University.

This month, my colleague Dr. Dave Cote and I are presenting a webinar for the Atlantic Salmon Conservation Foundation. Details here.

August 2014

August is usually a slow month in acadmia. However, we’re still pretty busy here in the LESA Lab. Summer students Tomo and Shannon have a few weeks left in their contracts and are wrapping up some excellent project work.

CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Roman Lukyanenko who passed his PhD exam with distinction on August 8. If you missed his excellent defence, you can watch a 3-minute video version here (taped at Memorial’s 3-minute thesis competition in 2013).

The Lewisporte Pilot published an article highlighting our Fogo Island Citizen Science project that is just getting underway. You can read the article here.

July 2014

Congrats to Roman Lukyanenko, PhD candidate who just got a paper accepted in the very prestigeous journal Information Systems Research, which also makes this week a “hat trick” for me (Shad and Julie’s papers were earlier this week). Roman’s paper is:

Congrats to Shad Mahlum, MSc grad from the LESA lab  on the acceptance of the second paper from his thesis for publication! Way to go! The citation is:

Congrats to Dr. Julie Andersen, LESA Lab Alumna on the acceptance of the final chapter of her thesis for publication in PLoS ONE.  The paper can be viewed/downloaded here. The citation is:

It’s been a good news month on the funding front. As PI, I was awarded two grants; a Partnership Workshop Grant from MEOPAR to run a workshop this fall on “Ocean Citizen Science and Ocean Literacy”. As well a group of us recieved funding under the Harris Centre Applied Reserach Fund to establish a citizen science project with fishermen on Fogo Island.

Here’s a link to a story on the Memorial website about my appointment (along with 3 other colleagues) to WERAC.

June 2014

I paper I collaborated on with colleagues at TUM (while on sabbatical) is out! PDFs here.

Acevedo-Cabra R, YWiersma, D Ankerst, T Knoke. 2014. Assessment of wildlife hazards with a semiparametric spatial approach. Environmental Modeling and Assessment DOI: 10.1007/s10666-014-9411-9

We’ve still got lots of icebergs!! You can track them here. As well, the lack of snow and somewhat nicer temps mean we are seeing an increase in sightings on NLNature.com. We’ve recently re-vamped the interface at NLNature a little bit to make it more user friendly. So, don’t forget to log your interesting sightings!

Welcome also to Shannon Steele, an undergrad from Dalhousie University, who is doing an exchance in my lab. She is working on NLNature.com and also OceanViewer.org

Nyssa came back to the Rock for her convocation. It was great to see her again. Congrats to her and the others from my lab who weren’t able to make their convocation – Shad Mahlum (MSc) and Julie Andersen (PhD).

 May 2014

It’s “spring” in Newfoundland. The teaching term is over, so we’re getting busy on some research in the lab. New summer student Tomo Sato just joined the lab, and will be working with me on a number of project over the next 16 weeks.

Spring in Newfoundland also means icebergs (and cold weather) – you can track them here. As well, the lack of snow and somewhat nicer temps mean we are seeing an increase in sightings on NLNature.com. Don’t forget to log your interesting sightings!

Spring also means election season for many academic societies, and Yolanda was just elected Coucillor-at-Large on the Executive of the US chapter of the International Association of Landscape Ecologists.

April 2014

Yolanda is off to the Canadian Section of the Wildlife Society annual meeting – where she will be a plenary speaker and presenting a poster. Then she’s off to Munich for the FChange meeting which her hosts and friends from last year’s sabbatical are organizing.

Work with my colleagues in IS, Dr. Jeffrey Parson and PhD student Roman Lukyanenko was cited recently in an editorial in MIS Quarterly – one of top journals in Infromation Systems. You can read the editorial on “Design science research” here.

March 2014

In honour of Women’s History Month, a colleague ( Linda Loubert of Morgan State University) is creating a crowd-sourced map of Women in GIS. Click here to see the map, and if you are a woman working with GIS (in research, teaching, gov’t/NGO work) – please add a point to the map!

February 2014

SUPER CONGRATULATIONS to Julie Andersen who passed her PhD oral exam! Congratulations Dr. Andersen! Well done! Here is a post-defense photo of her with her two supervisors – Dr. Garry Stenson and I.

Also a big CONGRATULATIONS to Nyssa on passing her MSc thesis examination! Way to go!

On February 9, Roger Tomlinson passed away. He is a Canadian known as the “Father of GIS”. You can read a tribute here. I had the amazing good fortune of interviewing him for the (then fledlging) Society for Conservation GIS back  in 2000 when I was beginning grad work and just discovering GIS and landscape ecology. I’ve dug it out and posted the interview here (I can’t believe I found it in a box! Guess I’m a packrat)… you can still buy the edition of the magazine Conservation Geography – edited by Charles Convis – that it was published in at the ESRI store.

LESA lab Alumna Megan Lafferty just signed a contract with Nature Conservancy Canada and is taking over and Conservation and Stewardsip Coordinator for the NL office of NCC. She has also been invited to present a Webinar of her MES work to members of NCASI later this month.

January 2014

Happy new year from the LESA lab!

Yolanda is part of a special issue in Scholarly Review and Communications in which Canadian scientists reflect on their careers and the “state of science”. You can read her piece here.

Congratulations to LESA lab Alumna Nyssa – whose work has just been accepted for publication in the Natural Areas Journal. This citation is:

    Van Vierssen Trip N, YF Wiersma. A comparison of All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) trail impacts on boreal habitats across scales. Natural Areas Journal.

December 2013

Shad’s paper on fish movement across culverts in Terra Nova national park is out. Limited number of PDFs are available here.

Mahlum S, D Cote, YF Wiersma, D Kehler, KD Clarke. 2014. Evaluating the barrier assessment technique FishXing and the upstream movement of fish through road culverts. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 143(1): 39-48

Julie’s third thesis chapter is finally out with PLOS One. You can find it by clicking here.

Andersen JM, M Skern-Mauritzen, L Boehme, YF Wiersma, A Rosing-Asvid,MO Hammill, GB Stenson. 2013. Investigating annual diving behaviour by Hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) within the Northwest                               Atlantic Ocean. PLoSOne 8(10): e80438. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080438

Limited number of full PDFs of Tony’s recent article “Benefits and drawbacks of two modelling approaches for a generalist carnivore: can models predict where Wile E. Coyote will turn up next? In the International Journal of GIS are available here.

November 2013

Yolanda is presenting at the “MUNbuttoned” session #2 at Rocket Bakery on November 13. Check out the full 3-night schedule of events at munbuttoned.ca

NLNature is profiled in the St. John’s Telegram today. See the full article at: http://www.thetelegram.com/Living/2013-11-05/article-3465649/Nature-from-the-ground-up/1

October 2013

Congratulations to PhD candidate Julie Andersen on acceptance of a thesis chapter for publicaiton in PLoS. The citation is:

Andersen JM, M Skern-Mauritzen, L Boehme, YF Wiersma, A Rosing-Asvid,MO Hammill, GB Stenson. In press. Investigating annual diving behaviour by Hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) within the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. PLoS One.

Our citizen science website NLNature.com is yielding some interesting (and unanticipated sightings). Here’s a story on one of them from the St. John’s Telegram.

October 17, 2013: Academic Top 10 story on Academica group (scroll down to story #5)

September 2013

MSc almnus Tony McCue has had a paper accepted based on collaboration with our colleagues in the provincial Wildlife Division. Congratulations – persistence pays off! The citaiton is:

McCue AJ, McGrath MJ, Wiersma YF. In press. Benefits and drawbacks of two modeling approaches for a generalist carnivore: can models predict where Wile E. Coyote will turn up next? International Journal of Geographic Information Systems. 3^rd Special Issue on Spatial Ecology.

Congratulations to Shad on passing his MSc thesis examination! He is continuing work in fisheries research in Norway.

August 2013

Congraulations to Karla on passing her MSc thesis examination! Karla has just accepted a one-year contract as a Wildlife Management Biology with the government  of Nunavut. She is moving to Iqaluit later this month. Good luck Karla!

Congratulations to Shad on submission of his thesis.

Megan successfully passed her MES major paper and is also graduating from the LESA lab. She has started a six-month contract as Conservation and Stewardship Coordinator with the Nature Conservancy Canada – Newfoundland & Labrador chapter. We’re happy she’s sticking around on the Rock for a bit!

July 2013

We’re very excited to announce the launch of our newly-revamped Citizen Science website, NLNature. Visit it and contribute often! Tell your friends!

Megan submitted her MES Major paper. Way to go!

Congratulations to Shad on the acceptance of a manuscript at Transactions in American Fisheries Science. This work represents chapter 2 of his thesis and looks at predicted vs. actual fish passage in culverts at Terra Nova National Park. The citation is:

Mahlum S, D Cote, YF Wiersma, D Kehler, KD Clarke. In press. Evaluating the barrier assessment technique FishXing and  the upstream movement of fish through road culverts. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

June, 2013

Roman is off on a two week tour of the island to promote our citizen science website, nlnature.com to various interest groups.

Congratulations to Karla for submission of her MSc thesis.

May, 2013

Yolanda is now on Research Gate… you can “follow” here there: www.researchgate.net

April, 2013

Karla Letto successfully presented her MSc exit seminar on Friday, April 19 with an engaging and interesting talk. One more hurdle towards completion achieved…

March, 2013

Congratulations to Christina Bourne for successfully passing her MSc thesis examination! Way to go!!!

February, 2013

Roman is profiled in the 2011-2012 School of Graduate Studies report. The full report is available here; scroll to pg. 11 to find him.

Congratulations to Shad for submission of a manuscript from his thesis work. It’s great to see that achieved already!

Good news for my colleague Dr. Amy Hurford and I, who just received funding from the Institute for Environmental Monitoring and Research. We’ll be working with data from the provincial Wildlife Division to model caribou movement and herd fidelity in Labrador.

January, 2013

Happy new year from the LESA Lab! Watch for more news from us in 2013! We are looking forward to another productive and exciting year!

Congratulations to Karla Letto, who just landed a short-term contract to work at DFO in St. John’s.

Julie’s third chapter of her PhD is now published! Below is the reference. She is busy revising chapter four after encouraging reviews from PLoS.

December, 2012

Congratulations to Stacey for successfully passing her MSc! Hope your new job at Stantec in Corner Brook is going well!

Yolanda has volunteered on the national “Ask a Scientist” panel. Check it out, and tell all your non-scientist friends and family to send their interesting and intriguing science questions to this group.

Congratulations to Christina for submitting her MSc!

November, 2012

Congratulations to LESA Lab Alumnus Tony McCue, who just began a position as an Environmental Scientist with Stantec out in British Columbia. Best of luck out west Tony!

Congratulations to Roman – who was awarded a $5000 research grant from the Harris Centre to support our work using NLNature as a platform for research in Citizen Science. Nice work Roman!

October 2012

Congratulations to Julie, who submitted her PhD thesis and to Stacey, who submitted her MSc thesis!

Also congratulations to Shaun Garland, MSc, who is convocating this month!

Emilie is off to present a poster at the Wildlife Society meeting in Portland, OR (this is the third meeting in the last 18 months that someone from the lab is attending that is in the Pacific Northwest – popular destination!)

Emma presented a talk at the Annual Meeting of the Atlantic Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers in Halifax, NS.

September 2012

Yolanda is off on her first sabbatical. She will be visiting the Institute for Forest Management, at the Technical University of Munich. Auf wiedersehn!

June 2012

Shad Mahlum is off to Massachusetts to present at the National Conference on Engineering & Ecohydrology for Fish Passage. From there, he is re-locating to Norway (to write up), via Montana. No he’s not bad with directions…

Congratulations to Shaun Garland on successfully passing his MSc examination!

May 2012

Congrats to MSc student Troy Davis and the group of undergrads from BIOL 2600 on the publication of our paper in the journal Arboriculture and Urban Forestry.

Yolanda is off to the North American Fish and Wildlife Conservation Congress to present a poster of Tony’s work (he’s busy moving).

Work that Yolanda has done with colleague Renee Sieber at McGill and her team has been published in a book that was released this month at the final GEOIDE meeting. The book, on “The Added Value of Scientific Networking”, is available online here.

April 2012

Good luck to Karla as she heads off to Duke University for a 3 month visit in Dr. Dean Urban’s lab under a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement.

Karla is also presenting this month at the US-IALE meeting in Rhode Island.

Also a fond farewell and good luck to Troy Davis, who is heading back south of the 49th parallel to take a position with the US National Parks Service in the Smokeys. We’ll miss you!

January 2012

Congratulations to Tony McCue on successfully passing his MSc examination!

My former PhD supervisor Tom Nudds and I wrote a letter to PNAS that created a little bit of debate. Thanks to the LESA lab folks whose discussions of the paper by Pompa et al. in our journal group prompted me to write the letter! Tom’s colleague Dr. Karl Cottenie sums up the story rather nicely in his (wicked awesome!) blog. You should subscribe to this blog – it’s good.

December 2011

Julie is presenting a poster at the Biennial  Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Tampa, Florida.

September 2011

Roman is presenting at a workshop in the UK called The Difference that Makes a Difference: an interdisciplinary workshop on information and technology

Shad Mahlum and our colleague Dave Cote from Parks Canada are presenting at the American Fisheries Society meeting in Seattle.

May 2011

Congratulations to Troy Davis, who is a published author in an anthology of work on working for the US National Parks Service.

April 2011

Nyssa Trip is off to Portland, Oregon to present at the US-IALE meeting.

March 2011

Congratulations to honours student Patricia Howse, award winner at the APICS conference.

January 2011

My co-edited book is out with Springer. Thanks to everyone for their patience and understanding as I holed up doing final edits!