Citizen science dives into water quality

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Kirsten Grant, General Science co-editor With millions of lakes in Canada, monitoring water quality is no small feat. Canada’s vastness means it’s impossible to collect data everywhere. The situation is made ever more difficult by a lack of funding for long-term environmental monitoring. But Water Rangers Executive Director Kat Kavanagh says citizens can play a […]

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When mountains collapse: New-tech geodatabase helps geologists assess landslide hazard and risk

Jesse Mysiorek, New Science Communicator Early in the morning of August 2, 2014, part of a mountain collapsed in Jure, Nepal, about 70 kilometres northeast of Kathmandu. Some 5.5 million cubic metres of rock and debris – equal to the size of Grouse Mountain, north of Vancouver, BC – tumbled down into the Sunkoshi Valley, […]

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Going dry: How decreasing water levels put our food supply at risk

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Kelsey Voss, New Science Communicator Freshwater: The most important resource of our fast-growing world. We need it to drink and to grow food. We use water for drinking, washing, industrial processes, natural resources, and growing food, but our water supply is dwindling. In recent decades, we have seen increasing declines in freshwater levels across the […]

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Pinned: How natural history museums bridge research gaps in space and time

Photo by Alex Proimos

Kris Cu, New Science Communicator Jayme Lewthwaite, a PhD candidate who studies evolutionary biology at Simon Fraser University, enters the grand halls of the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History in Washington, DC. She walks past the elegant and elaborate exhibits, heading to the sun-lit research labs. She climbs to the floor labelled ‘Lepidoptera Collections’, which […]

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Meat glue: The tricky, sticky, and sometimes icky world of food science writing

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Amanda Maxwell, Science Borealis editorial coordinator Writing about science is a great way to explore new subject areas and make cool discoveries. Often, you follow what interests you and get to tell everybody else what’s so fascinating about it. But sometimes, you find out things that aren’t so great. For example, who wants to learn […]

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