The Farm and Freshwater Ecology Research Network (FERN) is a program of the Healthy Headwaters Lab aimed at centering local voices in our program of research. The FERN connects landowners, farmers, researchers, and community organizations in the agricultural space throughout Southern Ontario, and allows the Healthy Headwaters Lab to produce higher quality, more valuable research that reflects the knowledge needs of our community.
On November 24th, we welcomed over 40 people to our inaugural FERN Symposium – an annually recurring public event that was initially intended to be a mixer-style learning and networking event. The COVID-19 pandemic led to this, like most events in 2020, to be virtual, but we still managed to gather to hear fascinating lightning talks about ongoing work both by the Healthy Headwaters team members and our partners. Topics ranged from carbon complexity in farm fields to COVID masks, from algal blooms in the Thames River to plant-microbe relationships in root systems. Presenters included the Essex Region Conservation Authority (Claire Sanders and Dr. Katie Stammler), Nature Conservancy Canada (Karen Alexander), and other researchers within the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (Dr. Mike McKay, Dr. Kenneth Drouillard, and Dr. Cameron Procter).
The Symposium was followed by a closed meeting of the Farmer Advisory Board (FAB) – a board of farmers and agricultural experts who guide the research program of the Healthy Headwaters Lab. The FAB meets formally twice per year to review ongoing and proposed research and to help ‘keep the Healthy Headwaters Lab honest’ by ensuring the questions we ask are of value to the local community in which we are embedded. More information on the FAB can be found here.
The FERN Symposium presentations were recorded and can be viewed below, with time stamps for each topic given in the video description.
