When Dr. John Rex asked the audience one thing they feared, the loudest answer was “water”. Indeed, water can cause a lot of destruction to humanity, but the underlying aspect related to this is that it is very powerful – all life originated from water. Altering the properties of water can have big consequences, which has been underestimated by humanity. This has caused many problems of an unprecedented scale. John Rex’s work was related to watershed management, specifically small streams (which are sensitive). The fact that first and second order streams are more numerous than higher order streams was new for me. The policy implemented in Prince George of conserving 10 stems for every 100 meters has helped in maintaining the temperature of the streams. The shade levels pre and post harvest were found to be the same, after this policy was implemented. I found the usage of indicator questions to find out whether the streams were functioning to be an interesting methodology, because it involved Yes-No binary answers for all the questions, and then the number of “Yes” determined the level of functioning. The levels of “Yes” required to enter a certain category of functioning seemed arbitrary. If I could ask a question, it would be about whether having subjective (descriptive) answers to determine the level of functioning of streams would add to the data collected.

Maintaining a supply of wood in the streams was helpful, but the trees needing to be mature was interesting. Immature stands of trees such as Douglas Fir were found to decrease water flow due to evaporation. As the buffer width increased, better outcomes in terms of the maintenance of property of water was seen. Another aspect I found interesting was that there was no effect of pine beetle on stream flow, because this seemed counter intuitive to me.

Streams affect the biodiversity present in the area – in the water as well as those on land. The bull trout habitat is found to be potentially affected. Part of the work done involved hazard rating the habitats of this fish in order to change management practices and move towards conservation. The importance of communication for good management was also discussed. This is useful for my research in green buildings where communication and management among the various entities such as architects, tenants, owners, and housing associations are important to move towards green building implementation – which results in conservation.

The humor used during the presentation was entertaining. It also provided a break between interpreting the slides – a few of which were data heavy. “Really good GIS” for an approximate map that used stars and many colors to depict things especially made me laugh. So did “Not us people, but people who know how to make webpages.” These spaces between the content of the research gave the audience the time to think about the content communicated until that certain point, and was an effective method of communicating information rich in data, according to me.