A number of researchers will gather at Kennedy Lakes for the next two weeks to discover and document the different species they find.
It’s part of the BiotaNB project, run by the New Brunswick Museum, which aims to grow data on the province’s Protected Natural Areas (PNAs) like Kennedy Lakes.
From June 26 to July 9, more than 50 experts, volunteers and students from across Canada will descend for the first of a two-year study at the lakes.
Donald McAlpine, head of the natural history department at the museum, says the research helps them learn how to better care for the protected areas. It also gets uploaded into an international database available to researchers around the world.
“We’re trying to cover a wide range of different taxonomic groups—different groups of funghi, plants and animals to get some idea of what species are present in these protected areas and contribute to the management plans that are being developed for them,” he said.
This is the eleventh annual BiotaNB project to discover and document the biodiversity of the PNAs in New Brunswick. This year is also the halfway mark of this two-decade long project.
McAlpine says Kennedy Lakes is 21,000 hectares, or roughly the size of Fundy National Park, and comes with a unique set of challenges.
“It’s the most remote protected natural area that we’ve worked in so far, so logistically its been fairly complicated,” he said. There aren’t many roads, so the crew will be portaging via canoe.
NBM Natural History staff are heading off with “ton” of gear to the Kennedy Lakes Protected Natural Area for BiotaNB 2019, the NBM’s annual PNA biological inventory project. It takes a lot of gear to support 50+ researchers, students and artists for 14 days in the wilderness! pic.twitter.com/1hVeq5sVpA
— NBM-MNB (@nbmmnb) June 24, 2019
Researchers will be studying things like lichens, green plants, small mammals, moss, bogs, and funghi. McAlpine says each year they find something new.
“Every year we’ve gone out we’ve found species that are not just new to New Brunswick, but are new for North America, new for Canada. In a number of cases they’re undescribed, so these are species that are new to science. So, there are plenty of new discoveries to be made,” he said.
McAlpine says there will also be three artists-in-residents at the site, a collaboration they’ve had since 2010.
“This is primarily a science project but it’s always interesting to see what happens when science and art intersect,” he said.
“They’ll be documenting the plants, the animals, the funghi, the people, the landscapes—providing some kind of a record of the work that’s going on and the habitat they’re working in.”
Their art work will be on display at the museum once the project wraps up.
There will also be an open house held at the BiotaNB field lab on July 7, approximately 58 kilometres east of Plaster Rock on Highway 108 and 1.8 kilometres west of the Kennedy Lakes PNA boundary.
“Our hope is that some of the people who live nearby … who may not know much about this PNA will come into the lab space and join us there. They’ll all be able to share in some of the discoveries, see art in process, and talk to some of the students,” said McAlpine.
