Friday, November 8. 2019

Today's schedule is D-Assembly-CBA-PL

9:05 am-10:00 am – D Block
10:05 am-10:40 am – Assembly
10:40 am-11:40 pm – C Block
11:40 am-12:30 pm – Lunch
12:30 pm-1:25 pm – B Block
1:30 pm-2:25 pm – A Block
2:25 pm–3:15 pm – PL

Mr. Ingram's photo

D & C Blocks Environmental & Social Sciences - Today we are off for a field study of the beach at Point Holmes (Georgia Strait Alliance site code XPH). You will be doing a beach quadrat to look for biodiversity indicators through gathering quantitative information from the intertidal zone.

Quadrat studies are a method of looking at what kinds of animals, seaweeds and plants live in the intertidal zone, and how abundant they are relative to each other. A primary quadrat analysis is a survey of what is living above the substrate level (the beach has cobbles and boulders that come from the Vashon Till plain which makes up Cape Lazo - it is exposed to the southeast winter winds and is a high energy shoreline which causes erosion of the bluffs to the beach). It does not include unattached (washed up) plants or dead animals. It gives us information about what kinds of species are living on the beach, how many of them are present and how much of the beach they occupy.

We'll start with the high tide line/drift line (supralittoral), work through the inter tidal zone (mesolittoral), and finish with the swash zone (infralittoral). Often the wrack line (last high tide line) is covered in seaweed and other material (i.e. plastic pollution and beach litter). If there are multiple wrack lines, all details describing which wrack line was evaluated should be included in your notes.  Identification should be to the species level if possible. Use magnifiers, identification sheets, and field identification books to help you identify organisms. If unsure note it with a question mark and take a picture of it. For algae, identifying to genus is often all that is practical in the field. There are two types of data being collected in the primary survey – percent cover and species presence/abundance. Percent cover takes into account both living and dead material – species presence/abundance only records living organisms.

Our low tide at Point Holmes will be 2.5 m (8.2 ft) at 8:32 am.

B Block Human Geography - Today we are back in the learning commons/library for your last day to work on your information graphic poster on an endangered language. Remember, for your endangered language you’ll need to:

1. Show where the endangered language originated and diffused to (yes on a map).
2. Show the connection to the family, branch, and group of the endangered language. (Use your best judgment on this). 
3. Show where the language is spoken today, indicate how many people speak it.
4. Show Unique features of this endangered language (What makes it different to and similar than others?)
5. Show examples of how the language is written and or spoken 
6. Show why your endangered language is important to save
7. Show how your endangered language is both being threatened (contributing factors) and being saved
8. Show how people can find more info (links...sources cited)

See me if you need help or assistance. This project is due a week from today - email me your digital infoposter.

A Block Physical Geography - If the weather holds, I'd like for us to take the class to walk down to the Tsolum River to look at fluvial processes and riparian environments. This field exploration connects to the topics we looked at this week (floodplains and stream profiles along with fluvial transport and stream dynamics - as of 7 pm Nov 7th the real time hydrometric data indicates the primary water level was 0.645 m and the discharge rate "Q" for the Tsolum was 1.7 m3/s). I hope that you have some sturdy shoes with you while we trek on our exploration of the river.