FERN: Let’s Talk About Drains
Watersheds are made up of hundreds to thousands of channels that drain water from land into water. Research led by Ryan Graham involved a survey across 10 drains in Windsor Essex to explore the relationships between plant communities in drains and Phragmites management.
Cultivating Connections at EFAO 2023
Connecting with community and cultivating connections is essential to our science. HHL has centered local farming perspectives through our Farm Advisory Board (FAB) and broader Farm + Freshwater Ecology Research Network (FERN) as we believe that conversations lead to impactful collaborations, which we have formalized into HHL’s knowledge co-production process. That's why we are extending a warm invitation to all those attending EFAO 2023 to come join us at our booth and connect! We are committed to creating a space where we can share ideas, experiences, and connections.
Pluralism in Research: HHL
Some of the most common questions we get in the Healthy Headwaters Lab (HHL) are: How do we do what we do? How do we effectively engage communities as part of our research? The impacts of our research are evident in the strength of the relationships we’ve fostered and the diverse ways in which our research translates to positive societal impacts. To help tell that story, we recently published a paper sharing insights into HHL’s formative years. This paper contributes to a growing area of academic scholarship: Pluralism in Environmental Governance.
ICYMI: Our FAB night out!
Listen to recordings of 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.
Behind the Scenes: Agricultural Research
Taking you behind the scenes of some of our agricultural fieldwork this summer as we manually drilled over 100 boreholes to collect soil data.
Teamwork got us through a covid farm fieldwork season
Covid may have thrown a spanner in Lauren Weller’s plans but we were able to pivot, and when research resumed so did fieldwork! It was a race to finish before the crops came off but the HHL team sprang into action to help and we got it done.