The purpose of this Mitacs Accelerate project is to create a cross-platform mobile tree mapping application that would serve as a learning resource and participatory interface for citizen engagement concerning urban tree stewardship. The tool will be prototyped for Grange Park, a prominent and heavily used urban park in downtown Toronto. Development of the mobile mapping tool will use HTML5 with several Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and libraries such as jQuery and Google Maps/Fusion Tables. The project has two organizational partners.

The Honna River is a source of drinking water for the Village of Queen Charlotte on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. There is concern that sediment from a highly traveled logging road is contributing to poor water quality in the Honna River. This project is following up on the work of Elizabeth Baird (2010 Mitacs Intern), where she determined what factors controlled sediment leaving logging roads. However, the dataset she used was limited to a 10 month period. This project has two main objectives using a longer dataset collected over the past 3 years: 1.

The species of European hawkweeds present in British Columbia are aggressive and ecologically detrimental invaders of meadows, parks, agricultural lands and rangelands. Left unmanaged, these species could cost the province of British Columbia upwards of $60 million in economic losses by 2020. The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MoFLNRO) is responsible for addressing invasive plant species on Crown land.

The research objectives for this proposed Mitacs project are to identify the forested Tribal Lands in the US that hold the most promise for participating in the developing regional US and Canadian offset markets. The partner organization is Offsetters Clean Technology, a BC based company with expertise in carbon management and advisory services in Canada. This project will ultimately result in the creation of a new line of business for the company focused on First Nations and tribes outside of British Columbia.

Recently introduced micronized copper wood preservative system has successfully captured most of the treated wood market in the USA; however, it cannot be acceptable in Canada because the wood surface is mottled and streaky in appearance when it is applied to Canadian wood species (spruce-pine fir). This problem may be solved by partially solubilizing copper with MEA to provide an even color to wood surface.

Forest certification is a voluntary market-based instrument to promote sustainable forest management (SFM). Although, large areas of forests have been certified against different certification schemes in British Columbia, there has been a recent slowdown in the uptake of forest certification due to a number of factors, including a lack of awareness. Architects and builders have a key role in creating or translating demand for certified products due to their position in the value chain for forest products as they are could be both buyers and sellers of certified products.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have been considered for various applications including forest monitoring. WSN allow the user to have real-time spatial monitoring of the parameters of interest. For instance, with forest fire detections, the sensor nodes measure weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, precipitation and wind speed. Then, these parameters are forwarded to the control units to detect and/or predict forest fire risk. In this project, we aim to design algorithms and protocols for WSN-based forest monitoring systems.

Black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) is an important wild food plant for people and wildlife in the East Kootenays of British Columbia.  Over the past 50 years changes in forestry practices, and the intensity of timber harvesting have changed the forest and the habitat where black huckleberries grow.  This research project will employ scientific and ethnographic methods to investigate the effects that clear-cutting and logging are having on the abundance, productivity and harvesting of black huckleberry in the East Kootenays.  Developing an understanding of how huckleberries