Page 3 - 2019 Annual Report

CITIZEN SCIENCE PROGRAMS
Our citizen science program
became firmly established in
2017 and has become
a primary focus of the
Lagoon Society.
PENDER HARBOUR COASTAL WATERS MONITORING PROGRAMS
In the Sunshine Coast’s Pender Harbour region, as in other coastal
communities, wildlife, economics, and people rely on healthy coastal
ecosystems and the valuable services they provide. The watershed of Pender
Harbour is home to a diversity of both marine and freshwater organisms, but
quantitative data on their distribution and abundance has been limited. In this
time of rapid environmental change, it is more important than ever that we
monitor shifts in ecosystem health, to provide sound scientific information that
can inform decisions regarding the future of the community and the natural
environment.
By establishing and maintaining community-led monitoring programs, the
Lagoon Society seeks to fill the knowledge gap and obtain a baseline of
biodiversity against which future changes can be compared. Local volunteers are
an integral component to these programs, and they allow us to collect a large
amount of data that could never be achieved otherwise. Our volunteer program
has contributed more than 1600 hours to the monitoring program from more
than 140 individuals in 2019 alone. Many of these people are retired and would
like to contribute to their community, or are young individuals hoping to gain
some experience to further their careers. A few of our volunteers were school
groups who came out to have their students participate in citizen science.
The information gleaned from this data is directly beneficial to the community
at large, and having citizens collect it themselves increases appreciation for and
investment in the natural environment. Engaging with the community allows us
to provide training and education in a hands-on setting, equipping the next set of
stewards with the skills necessary to care for the natural world around them.
Intertidal Monitoring
The intertidal zone is one of the most productive ecosystems on earth, but it is
also one of the most stressful, and organisms living in this zone must contend
with daily fluctuations in salinity, temperature, light availability, pH, wave
exposure, and more. Many of these stressors are predicted to get more extreme
with climate change, and this will have an impact on both the distributions of
individual species and the biodiversity of the intertidal in general. Many species
that people and communities utilize for food either come from the intertidal or
rely on species that do, so it is a critical focus of our monitoring efforts.
Our work in the intertidal includes surveys of both rocky and soft sediment
substrates, as these are expected to have highly distinct floral and faunal
communities. This year a total of 12 surveys were completed at 4 locations
within Pender Harbour and Thormanby Island. Teams of volunteers surveyed
the rocky intertidal at Baker Beach in July and December, Irvines Landing in
June and November, and Thormanby Island in February and July. They also
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