Bees of Yukon and northern British Columbia
Gordon Hutchings, bee expert and advocate
Sunday, August 14, 2011, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
‘Mellitology’, the study of bees, is an -ology every gardener or lover of flora & fauna should know. As pollinators, the nectar-feasting of bees provides fertilization and reproduction for a wide variety of plants (including of course, the ones we humans like to eat!). This is why recent bee population declines across North America are such a concern.
Join bee expert and advocate, Gordon Hutchings, as he speaks about native bee pollinators, their life cycle, role in pollination, and habitat needs. While most people think of hives and black and yellow stripes when they think of bees, Gord will open up the world of Yukon ground-nesting bee species, some of which don’t look much like a bumblebee.
Lecture to be followed at 8:30 by Queen of the Sun, 2010, a documentary film directed by Taggart Siegel – “a poetic and passionate homage to bees and beekeepers.”
Klondike Gold Rush Graves Recovered in Dawson City, Yukon
Greg Hare, Project Archaeologist, Yukon Government
Susan Moorhead Mooney, Project Osteologist/ Physical Anthropologist
Sunday, July 24, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
In November 2010, construction workers in Dawson City, Yukon accidentally uncovered several deeply buried wooden coffins and associated human skeletal remains, while working on the city’s new wastewater treatment facility. The unmarked graves were shown to be those of individuals hanged over 100 years ago in Dawson City at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. In June 2011, the remains of the four individuals associated with the graves were reburied in accordance with the wishes of the Elders from Kwanlin Dün, Ta’an Kwäch’än, and Carcross/Tagish First Nation, and the protocols of the Yukon Government.
The first half of this presentation reviews the community effort involved in the discovery and recovery of these well preserved graves. The second half of this presentation explores the skeletal analysis of the remains and reveals the identities of the four individuals associated with the Yukon’s first hangings.
Wind Energy in the Yukon
JP Pinard, PhD., P.Eng.
Sunday, May 29, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
In the Yukon, wind turbines have been in operation since the early 1920’s when they were used to pump water, and power lights and radios in remote places. Research into the commercial wind energy potential in the Yukon in the early 1980’s focussed on valley bottoms without much success. It wasn’t until later that decade that Dr. Doug Craig and his team showed that winter winds on mountaintops were sufficiently powerful to generate wind energy in large quantities, beginning a new era of wind energy research that continues to this day.
Join Dr. JP Pinard on a journey through the history of wind prospecting in the Yukon, and an exploration of the promise in wind energy as a renewable energy source for an evolving Yukon. Dr. Pinard will draw on over fifteen years experience researching the wind energy potential in the Yukon, and will incorporate the results of his PhD thesis on the wind climate in Yukon mountainous terrain.
An Ocean of Hope
Alanna Mitchell, Award-winning journalist and author
Sunday, May 1, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 7:30 pm Dawson City Community Library, Dawson City
All that carbon in the atmosphere is doing more than changing the climate. It's also changing the basic chemistry of the global ocean, to scientists' surprise. Alanna will inspire with stories of how she travelled the globe to meet the scientists who are figuring it out and how she put the pieces of this scientific puzzle together. She will leave you with hope and a sense of how people around the world can work together to bring us back from the brink.
Census of Marine Life
Ron O’Dor, Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University
Senior Scientist, Census of Marine Life
Monitoring Ocean Biodiversity
Friday, April 8, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon College Lecture Theatre, Whitehorse
The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year international effort undertaken to assess the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life—a task never before attempted on this scale. In order to reach their goals, participants in the program tested dozens of new undersea technologies such as remotely operated underwater vehicles and gliders, the Barcode of Life DNA sequence technology and the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking system. Many of these monitoring methods will be used in the future to detect rapid alterations due to climate changes and levels of ocean acidification.
A Decade of Discovery
Sunday, April 10, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The Census of Marine Life celebrated a Decade of Discovery in October 2010 in London, reporting on the many discoveries the program made in the 90% of the Earth’s Biosphere that is ocean. But even with 2,700 scientists internationally contributing 30,000,000 records to the Census’ database, it is estimated that there are at least 750,000 undiscovered marine species, and that 20% of the ocean has still never had a single sample taken from it. Join Ron as he illuminates some of the weird and wonderful creatures that were found in the depths.
Music, Dopamine, and the Brain: Where Emotions Meet Pleasure
Valorie N. Salimpoor, Ph.D. Candidate
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University
Sunday, March 27, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, March 28, 2011, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson City
Music is merely a sequence of tones. Yet, music listening has been described as one of the most intensely pleasurable human experiences, causing states of craving and euphoria. How does this happen? What happens in our brains that motivates us to spend considerable amounts of time and money to achieve musical experiences.
Join Valorie Salimpoor as she discusses the physiological and neurological correlates that underlie pleasurable experiences to music. Why do we experience “chills” or “goosebumps” in response to highly emotional music? What does dopamine release in the mesolimbic reward circuitry during music listening do for us? What role does anticipation and high-order cognition play in experiencing pleasure in response to music? And what happens in the brain when we first start to like a piece of music? Music has existed in every culture throughout history. An exploration of how pleasurable responses to music are processed in the brain can help us better understand why.
Yukon Water & Permafrost: Assessing Vulnerabilities and Sharing Information
Sunday, March 20, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, March 21, 2011, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
Join us for Canada Water Week (March 14-22) by attending a joint presentation on water and permafrost – and watch for other events celebrating “ Healthy Rivers and Living Lakes” over the course of the week.
Water
Holly Goulding, Water Adaptation Analyst, Environment Yukon
Ensuring access to clean drinking water, the essential role of water in our natural resource sectors, and concerns about climate impacts on our water resources all highlight the vital role water plays in Yukoners’ lives. In response, Holly Goulding will introduce a recently conducted water resource vulnerability assessment and the monitoring that is currently undertaken to ensure the health of our communities and ecosystems.
Permafrost
Sarah Laxton, Surficial Geologist, Yukon Geological Survey
The damage of vertical infrastructure attributable to permafrost degradation results in high costs for building renovation and replacement. Sarah Laxton will discuss recent work to address Yukon’s susceptability to future permafrost degradation through compilation of permafrost related data throughout the territory and its availability to the public via the Yukon Permafrost Network on the Yukon Geological Survey website.
Space for Canadians
Dr. Steve MacLean
President, Canadian Space Agency
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Why explore space? Former astronaut Steve MacLean, now President of the Canadian Space Agency, addresses the question while giving an overview of some of the Canadian Space Program’s most exciting projects. He will also touch on how the Canadian Space Agency strives to expand our knowledge of space science and technology for the benefit of Canadians with a particular emphasis on the North.
A sensitive slope: Forest recovery after fire in a changing climate
Jill Johnstone
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan
Sunday, February 20, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, February 21, 2011, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
Forests are composed of long-lived plants capable of tolerating high levels of environmental stress. As a result, forests may be slow in responding to changing environmental conditions, such as those brought on by recent climate change. Instead of gradual change, we can predict that we should see punctuated changes in forest communities that are triggered by disturbance.
In this talk, Dr. Johnstone will present results from a recent fire near Whitehorse, Yukon (the 1998 Fox Lake fire) and examine patterns of forest recovery in light of resilience theory. Data from the Fox Lake fire suggest that the pre-fire forests of white spruce are not uniformly recovering to form new spruce forests. Instead, forest recovery is dependent on local topography and microclimate. Sites that are typically warm and dry show the greatest potential for switching to new forest types. This study suggests that although fires may stimulate rapid shifts in forest composition, we can use our understanding of boreal landscapes to predict where we should expect the greatest changes to occur with future climate warming.
Recent dynamics of alpine treeline in Yukon's Kluane region
Ryan Danby
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Queen's University
Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 7:30 pm Fireside Room, Yukon Inn, Whitehorse
For the last ten years Dr. Ryan Danby has been studying treeline environments in the Kluane region of southwest Yukon to better understand the link between climate change and treeline dynamics. The research uses a wide variety of techniques, including field surveys and experiments, tree ring analysis, satellite image analysis, and aerial photography.
Join Ryan as he explores how the results of these collective investigations indicate that treeline advanced rapidly in the mid-1900s and that there is potential for another similar advance to occur as climate continues to warm. However, it is also anticipated that the rate, pattern, and timing of future changes will vary significantly because of the extreme variability inherent in the Kluane landscape. In an effort to gain a more complete picture of vegetation dynamics in the region, the research program is currently being expanded to examine a range of other vegetation types, including grasslands, wetlands, valley forests and alpine tundra.
Life in an Acid Soup: How global warming destroyed life in the oceans 250 million years ago
Dr. Benoit Beauchamp, Executive Director, Arctic Institute of North America
Professor, Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary
Sunday, January 9, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
When continents were assembled in a single super-continent called Pangea, between 300 and 250 million years ago during the Permian Period, atmospheric CO2 increased 5 to 10 times driven by natural causes. As a result, global temperatures rose dramatically, while the oceans became increasingly acid. By the end of the Permian, more than 95% of living creatures had become extinct. By then the planet was an uninhabitable fireball and the oceans a most inhospitable acid soup.
We are currently pushing CO2 atmospheric levels to new highs every year. With rising temperatures on land and increasing acidity in the oceans, are we following the same path that the earth travelled 300 million years ago?
Use of space by caribou in northern Canada
John Nagy, PhD Candidate, University of Alberta
Sunday, December 12, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, December 13, 2010, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson City
Understanding whether individuals are organized into distinct or continuous herds is important for management and conservation of caribou and their habitats. To answer this question, among others, over 700 caribou representing all of the ecotypes in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut including migratory and non-migratory barren-ground, mountain and boreal woodland, island, and Peary caribou have been tracked using satellite collars since 1993.
Join John Nagy as he presents an overview of some of the work he has done to analyze the resulting 450,000 lines (approximate) of satellite tracking data in order to describe how caribou are organized and use the landscape. Important issues such as “are barren-ground and boreal caribou organized differently on the landscape?”, “do barren-ground caribou maintain long-term fidelity to calving grounds?”, “does the Beverly herd still exist?” and “does size really matter for boreal caribou?” will be explored through his results.
After the Mountain Pine Beetle: management implications for the Yukon too?
Chris Hawkins, Vice President Research, Yukon College
Sunday, November 21, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, November 22, 2010, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
The mountain pine beetle killed millions of hectares of mature pine in central British Columbia earlier this decade. Two or three years after attack, the stands appear to be dead, but are they? We sampled more than 600 pine stands in central BC from 2005 to 2007. Though variable, there are residual trees, poles, saplings and seedling in these stands. Collectively this is called secondary stand structure. In follow-up sampling, growth of secondary stand structure was found to be increasing.
The pressing management question is what to do with these stands: leave them alone and allow stand dynamics to proceed or rehabilitate them by logging and planting. Though apparently straightforward, this is not an easy question to answer as it has biological, economic and social ramifications. Chris Hawkins will explore these implications and possible parallels with the spruce bark beetle outbreak in the Yukon. After all, the two beetles are very closely related, belonging to the same genus.
Fractured Mammoth Bones, Experimental Archaeology, and the Early Peopling of the Americas
Steven Holen, Curator of Archaeology, and Kathleen Holen, Department Associate, Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Friday, October 22, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Several mammoth sites on the central Great Plains of North America exhibit highly fractured limb bones with impact notches and bone flaking that appear to be the result of human modification. This evidence suggests that a small human population was present in the Great Plains during the Last Glacial Maximum when Canada was covered with glacial ice. Humans must have entered the Great Plains before the glacial ice blocked the route from Beringia about 22,000 radiocarbon years ago.
To help test this hypothesis, elephant femurs were experimentally broken and flaked to replicate mammoth bone breakage patterns observed at the archaeological sites. Video and still photography documents that adult elephant limb bone is difficult to break with hammer stones and that the use of an anvil facilitates the process. This research suggests that observed mammoth bone breakage patterns are indications of human technology, because no natural taphonomic process can break fresh cortical mammoth limb bone in these patterns. Join Steven Holen as he leads you through the experimental archeological process to the conclusion that these limb bones are evidence of human presence.
Volcanoes and Caribou: How genetics and volcanoes are shedding light on ancient Yukon
Tyler Kuhn, Paleogeneticist, M.Sc. candidate, Simon Fraser University
Sunday, September 19, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse Monday, September 20, 2010, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
The Yukon has much to offer, but the unique combination of mud, ice, volcanoes and bones is what excites paleoscientists. This combination has allowed researchers to obtain some of the oldest DNA on the planet, as well as explore some fascinating aspects of prehistoric life in the Yukon ranging from the dynamic history of caribou in the Whitehorse area, to linking demographic patterns to glacial-interglacial cycles.
Paleogeneticist, Tyler Kuhn, has found that around 1,000 years before present, coinciding with a large volcano in Alaska, the genetic relationships of caribou herds in the southern Yukon dramatically shifted. An identifiable caribou population disappeared, and a distinct lineage recolonized the area.
Join Tyler as he details the history of these herds and discusses several other projects that use volcanic ash beds as a time-stamp in conjunction with DNA to provide a glimpse further back in time than was previously possible. There won't be dinosaurs, but the creatures are still compelling.
Gordon Hutchings, bee expert and advocate
Sunday, August 14, 2011, 7:00 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
‘Mellitology’, the study of bees, is an -ology every gardener or lover of flora & fauna should know. As pollinators, the nectar-feasting of bees provides fertilization and reproduction for a wide variety of plants (including of course, the ones we humans like to eat!). This is why recent bee population declines across North America are such a concern.
Join bee expert and advocate, Gordon Hutchings, as he speaks about native bee pollinators, their life cycle, role in pollination, and habitat needs. While most people think of hives and black and yellow stripes when they think of bees, Gord will open up the world of Yukon ground-nesting bee species, some of which don’t look much like a bumblebee.
Lecture to be followed at 8:30 by Queen of the Sun, 2010, a documentary film directed by Taggart Siegel – “a poetic and passionate homage to bees and beekeepers.”
Klondike Gold Rush Graves Recovered in Dawson City, Yukon
Greg Hare, Project Archaeologist, Yukon Government
Susan Moorhead Mooney, Project Osteologist/ Physical Anthropologist
Sunday, July 24, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
In November 2010, construction workers in Dawson City, Yukon accidentally uncovered several deeply buried wooden coffins and associated human skeletal remains, while working on the city’s new wastewater treatment facility. The unmarked graves were shown to be those of individuals hanged over 100 years ago in Dawson City at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. In June 2011, the remains of the four individuals associated with the graves were reburied in accordance with the wishes of the Elders from Kwanlin Dün, Ta’an Kwäch’än, and Carcross/Tagish First Nation, and the protocols of the Yukon Government.
The first half of this presentation reviews the community effort involved in the discovery and recovery of these well preserved graves. The second half of this presentation explores the skeletal analysis of the remains and reveals the identities of the four individuals associated with the Yukon’s first hangings.
Wind Energy in the Yukon
JP Pinard, PhD., P.Eng.
Sunday, May 29, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
In the Yukon, wind turbines have been in operation since the early 1920’s when they were used to pump water, and power lights and radios in remote places. Research into the commercial wind energy potential in the Yukon in the early 1980’s focussed on valley bottoms without much success. It wasn’t until later that decade that Dr. Doug Craig and his team showed that winter winds on mountaintops were sufficiently powerful to generate wind energy in large quantities, beginning a new era of wind energy research that continues to this day.
Join Dr. JP Pinard on a journey through the history of wind prospecting in the Yukon, and an exploration of the promise in wind energy as a renewable energy source for an evolving Yukon. Dr. Pinard will draw on over fifteen years experience researching the wind energy potential in the Yukon, and will incorporate the results of his PhD thesis on the wind climate in Yukon mountainous terrain.
An Ocean of Hope
Alanna Mitchell, Award-winning journalist and author
Sunday, May 1, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 7:30 pm Dawson City Community Library, Dawson City
All that carbon in the atmosphere is doing more than changing the climate. It's also changing the basic chemistry of the global ocean, to scientists' surprise. Alanna will inspire with stories of how she travelled the globe to meet the scientists who are figuring it out and how she put the pieces of this scientific puzzle together. She will leave you with hope and a sense of how people around the world can work together to bring us back from the brink.
Census of Marine Life
Ron O’Dor, Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University
Senior Scientist, Census of Marine Life
Monitoring Ocean Biodiversity
Friday, April 8, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon College Lecture Theatre, Whitehorse
The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year international effort undertaken to assess the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life—a task never before attempted on this scale. In order to reach their goals, participants in the program tested dozens of new undersea technologies such as remotely operated underwater vehicles and gliders, the Barcode of Life DNA sequence technology and the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking system. Many of these monitoring methods will be used in the future to detect rapid alterations due to climate changes and levels of ocean acidification.
A Decade of Discovery
Sunday, April 10, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
The Census of Marine Life celebrated a Decade of Discovery in October 2010 in London, reporting on the many discoveries the program made in the 90% of the Earth’s Biosphere that is ocean. But even with 2,700 scientists internationally contributing 30,000,000 records to the Census’ database, it is estimated that there are at least 750,000 undiscovered marine species, and that 20% of the ocean has still never had a single sample taken from it. Join Ron as he illuminates some of the weird and wonderful creatures that were found in the depths.
Music, Dopamine, and the Brain: Where Emotions Meet Pleasure
Valorie N. Salimpoor, Ph.D. Candidate
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University
Sunday, March 27, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, March 28, 2011, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson City
Music is merely a sequence of tones. Yet, music listening has been described as one of the most intensely pleasurable human experiences, causing states of craving and euphoria. How does this happen? What happens in our brains that motivates us to spend considerable amounts of time and money to achieve musical experiences.
Join Valorie Salimpoor as she discusses the physiological and neurological correlates that underlie pleasurable experiences to music. Why do we experience “chills” or “goosebumps” in response to highly emotional music? What does dopamine release in the mesolimbic reward circuitry during music listening do for us? What role does anticipation and high-order cognition play in experiencing pleasure in response to music? And what happens in the brain when we first start to like a piece of music? Music has existed in every culture throughout history. An exploration of how pleasurable responses to music are processed in the brain can help us better understand why.
Yukon Water & Permafrost: Assessing Vulnerabilities and Sharing Information
Sunday, March 20, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, March 21, 2011, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
Join us for Canada Water Week (March 14-22) by attending a joint presentation on water and permafrost – and watch for other events celebrating “ Healthy Rivers and Living Lakes” over the course of the week.
Water
Holly Goulding, Water Adaptation Analyst, Environment Yukon
Ensuring access to clean drinking water, the essential role of water in our natural resource sectors, and concerns about climate impacts on our water resources all highlight the vital role water plays in Yukoners’ lives. In response, Holly Goulding will introduce a recently conducted water resource vulnerability assessment and the monitoring that is currently undertaken to ensure the health of our communities and ecosystems.
Permafrost
Sarah Laxton, Surficial Geologist, Yukon Geological Survey
The damage of vertical infrastructure attributable to permafrost degradation results in high costs for building renovation and replacement. Sarah Laxton will discuss recent work to address Yukon’s susceptability to future permafrost degradation through compilation of permafrost related data throughout the territory and its availability to the public via the Yukon Permafrost Network on the Yukon Geological Survey website.
Space for Canadians
Dr. Steve MacLean
President, Canadian Space Agency
Thursday, March 17, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Why explore space? Former astronaut Steve MacLean, now President of the Canadian Space Agency, addresses the question while giving an overview of some of the Canadian Space Program’s most exciting projects. He will also touch on how the Canadian Space Agency strives to expand our knowledge of space science and technology for the benefit of Canadians with a particular emphasis on the North.
A sensitive slope: Forest recovery after fire in a changing climate
Jill Johnstone
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan
Sunday, February 20, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, February 21, 2011, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
Forests are composed of long-lived plants capable of tolerating high levels of environmental stress. As a result, forests may be slow in responding to changing environmental conditions, such as those brought on by recent climate change. Instead of gradual change, we can predict that we should see punctuated changes in forest communities that are triggered by disturbance.
In this talk, Dr. Johnstone will present results from a recent fire near Whitehorse, Yukon (the 1998 Fox Lake fire) and examine patterns of forest recovery in light of resilience theory. Data from the Fox Lake fire suggest that the pre-fire forests of white spruce are not uniformly recovering to form new spruce forests. Instead, forest recovery is dependent on local topography and microclimate. Sites that are typically warm and dry show the greatest potential for switching to new forest types. This study suggests that although fires may stimulate rapid shifts in forest composition, we can use our understanding of boreal landscapes to predict where we should expect the greatest changes to occur with future climate warming.
Recent dynamics of alpine treeline in Yukon's Kluane region
Ryan Danby
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Queen's University
Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 7:30 pm Fireside Room, Yukon Inn, Whitehorse
For the last ten years Dr. Ryan Danby has been studying treeline environments in the Kluane region of southwest Yukon to better understand the link between climate change and treeline dynamics. The research uses a wide variety of techniques, including field surveys and experiments, tree ring analysis, satellite image analysis, and aerial photography.
Join Ryan as he explores how the results of these collective investigations indicate that treeline advanced rapidly in the mid-1900s and that there is potential for another similar advance to occur as climate continues to warm. However, it is also anticipated that the rate, pattern, and timing of future changes will vary significantly because of the extreme variability inherent in the Kluane landscape. In an effort to gain a more complete picture of vegetation dynamics in the region, the research program is currently being expanded to examine a range of other vegetation types, including grasslands, wetlands, valley forests and alpine tundra.
Life in an Acid Soup: How global warming destroyed life in the oceans 250 million years ago
Dr. Benoit Beauchamp, Executive Director, Arctic Institute of North America
Professor, Department of Geoscience, University of Calgary
Sunday, January 9, 2011, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
When continents were assembled in a single super-continent called Pangea, between 300 and 250 million years ago during the Permian Period, atmospheric CO2 increased 5 to 10 times driven by natural causes. As a result, global temperatures rose dramatically, while the oceans became increasingly acid. By the end of the Permian, more than 95% of living creatures had become extinct. By then the planet was an uninhabitable fireball and the oceans a most inhospitable acid soup.
We are currently pushing CO2 atmospheric levels to new highs every year. With rising temperatures on land and increasing acidity in the oceans, are we following the same path that the earth travelled 300 million years ago?
Use of space by caribou in northern Canada
John Nagy, PhD Candidate, University of Alberta
Sunday, December 12, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, December 13, 2010, 7:30 pm Dänojà Zho Cultural Center, Dawson City
Understanding whether individuals are organized into distinct or continuous herds is important for management and conservation of caribou and their habitats. To answer this question, among others, over 700 caribou representing all of the ecotypes in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut including migratory and non-migratory barren-ground, mountain and boreal woodland, island, and Peary caribou have been tracked using satellite collars since 1993.
Join John Nagy as he presents an overview of some of the work he has done to analyze the resulting 450,000 lines (approximate) of satellite tracking data in order to describe how caribou are organized and use the landscape. Important issues such as “are barren-ground and boreal caribou organized differently on the landscape?”, “do barren-ground caribou maintain long-term fidelity to calving grounds?”, “does the Beverly herd still exist?” and “does size really matter for boreal caribou?” will be explored through his results.
After the Mountain Pine Beetle: management implications for the Yukon too?
Chris Hawkins, Vice President Research, Yukon College
Sunday, November 21, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Monday, November 22, 2010, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
The mountain pine beetle killed millions of hectares of mature pine in central British Columbia earlier this decade. Two or three years after attack, the stands appear to be dead, but are they? We sampled more than 600 pine stands in central BC from 2005 to 2007. Though variable, there are residual trees, poles, saplings and seedling in these stands. Collectively this is called secondary stand structure. In follow-up sampling, growth of secondary stand structure was found to be increasing.
The pressing management question is what to do with these stands: leave them alone and allow stand dynamics to proceed or rehabilitate them by logging and planting. Though apparently straightforward, this is not an easy question to answer as it has biological, economic and social ramifications. Chris Hawkins will explore these implications and possible parallels with the spruce bark beetle outbreak in the Yukon. After all, the two beetles are very closely related, belonging to the same genus.
Fractured Mammoth Bones, Experimental Archaeology, and the Early Peopling of the Americas
Steven Holen, Curator of Archaeology, and Kathleen Holen, Department Associate, Denver Museum of Nature & Science
Friday, October 22, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse
Several mammoth sites on the central Great Plains of North America exhibit highly fractured limb bones with impact notches and bone flaking that appear to be the result of human modification. This evidence suggests that a small human population was present in the Great Plains during the Last Glacial Maximum when Canada was covered with glacial ice. Humans must have entered the Great Plains before the glacial ice blocked the route from Beringia about 22,000 radiocarbon years ago.
To help test this hypothesis, elephant femurs were experimentally broken and flaked to replicate mammoth bone breakage patterns observed at the archaeological sites. Video and still photography documents that adult elephant limb bone is difficult to break with hammer stones and that the use of an anvil facilitates the process. This research suggests that observed mammoth bone breakage patterns are indications of human technology, because no natural taphonomic process can break fresh cortical mammoth limb bone in these patterns. Join Steven Holen as he leads you through the experimental archeological process to the conclusion that these limb bones are evidence of human presence.
Volcanoes and Caribou: How genetics and volcanoes are shedding light on ancient Yukon
Tyler Kuhn, Paleogeneticist, M.Sc. candidate, Simon Fraser University
Sunday, September 19, 2010, 7:30 pm Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre, Whitehorse Monday, September 20, 2010, 7:30 pm Kluane National Park Visitor Centre, Haines Junction
The Yukon has much to offer, but the unique combination of mud, ice, volcanoes and bones is what excites paleoscientists. This combination has allowed researchers to obtain some of the oldest DNA on the planet, as well as explore some fascinating aspects of prehistoric life in the Yukon ranging from the dynamic history of caribou in the Whitehorse area, to linking demographic patterns to glacial-interglacial cycles.
Paleogeneticist, Tyler Kuhn, has found that around 1,000 years before present, coinciding with a large volcano in Alaska, the genetic relationships of caribou herds in the southern Yukon dramatically shifted. An identifiable caribou population disappeared, and a distinct lineage recolonized the area.
Join Tyler as he details the history of these herds and discusses several other projects that use volcanic ash beds as a time-stamp in conjunction with DNA to provide a glimpse further back in time than was previously possible. There won't be dinosaurs, but the creatures are still compelling.