I found the September 28^th, 2018 colloquium presentations by Drs. Holland and Stjernstrom interesting as they presented topics from a different part of the world, but the research turned out to be very related to BC as well. While they seemed to struggle with the language, I believe they were successful in presenting two different but applicable topics at what seemed like short notice.

Dr. Holland’s introduction of marine spatial planning stuck a chord with me due to his description of the required exclusive right of access for fish farms on the coast of Norway. From his slides, it appeared that fish farms in Norway block off access to inlets and areas between islands. While the economic incentives may be high, this type of area based tenure on Canadian navigable waters would not fit well on Canada’s shorelines. The other aspect of his talk that was quite a culture shock was his mention of the Speculative to Fact spectrum of claims to particular marine areas. Having been so immersed in BC’s paradigm of First Nations rights, title, traditional territories and strength of claim based on oral and other non spatial information, it was startling to be reminded of how our system here differs. It struck me that if your family had been fishing an area for five hundred years off the coast of Norway, you would need to provide some sort of solid proof rather than undocumented statements or your claim would be ignored as speculative information and not be considered in the planning process. It was also interesting to hear that the gatekeepers and significant economic gainers of the fish farming industry were the municipalities which is significantly different from BC’s system where the province holds the financial control of natural resource rents.

An aspect of Dr. Holland’s methods that I may incorporate into my research is his particularity with polygon versus point data. Working with lidar data could lead to possible over interpretation of the points into real world objects. It may help to let the models do the work of interpretation rather than letting my own forestry experience turn the point display into a Rorschach test.

Dr. Stjernstrom’s discussion of the income effect of natural resource rich, yet remote communities is also a mirror of BC, with our Oil and Gas workers as evidence of this. I am curious, however if the incomes of non-resource industry workers in remote BC communities follows the example that Dr. Stjernstrom described where even the school teachers make more than their urban counterparts. His question of how do we include hidden groups in sustainable development brought to mind some aspects of my own research in terms of managing natural resources for a number of varied and sometimes conflicting values.

Drs Holland and Stjernstrom did well with their responses to questions They seemed very knowledgeable on their topics, however I would have enjoyed hearing more about the concept of power in geography. It is a concept I don’t think we talk about enough in BC.