SPRING EQUINOX ISSUE
March 2020

This newsletter is timed to coincide with the vernal (Spring) equinox. There are two moments in the year when the Sun is exactly above the Equator and day and night are of equal length. In the Biosphere the vernal equinox falls on March 20 this year instead of March 21, as the Sun crosses the celestial equator going north. The vernal equinox also marks the beginning of spring, which lasts until the summer solstice (June 20 or 21). The next newsletter will be published at that time. The autumnal equinox occurs on September 22. This marks the beginning of autumn and our third quarterly of the year. The winter solstice, Dec 21, will prompt our fourth newsletter of the year.

The best time to see Mercury will be on March 24. Look for the planet low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. This will also be the best time to see Venus.  Look for the bright planet in the western sky after sunset. On April 8 we will have a full Supermoon. It may be called the Full Fish Moon because this is around the time that gaspereau swim upstream to spawn or the Maple Moon because we might be tapping the trees around that time. The Moon will be at its closest approach to the Earth and may look slightly larger and brighter than usual. On April 22, 23 you may be able to see the Lyrids Meteor Shower. This  is produced by dust particles left behind by a comet. The best time to see it will be from a dark location after midnight.  On May 7 there will be another  Supermoon, the last one of this year.  If we have clear skies, get out on the Biosphere trails and enjoy the incredible look into our universe.

March is 'Maple Sugar Time' - Si'ko'ku's
March is an exciting time in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere.  Birds are returning from migrations. Some animals are mating to later give birth during warmer spring days. One of the most exciting events in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere is the running of the maple sap! In the Mi’kmaw calendar, March is maple sugar time, or Si’ko’ku’s. Maple sap contains sugar that was deposited in the roots as starch during the previous autumn. In early spring as the days begin to get warmer, the living cells in the root transform the starch back into sugar. While doing this, the cells respire and carbon dioxide builds up and diffuses into the sapwood, the layer near the outside of the trunk just under the bark layer. The build-up of pressure causes the sap to leak through any openings in the bark layer. At this point it is the difference in day and night temperatures that controls the quality of the sap. If the night is cool enough, the carbon dioxide gas dissolves, causing a drop in pressure. This draws the sugary water from all of the living cells into the sapwood. Because of the pressure differences, this water is replaced by water from other living cells in the tree trunk and a flow takes place. If the night gets colder, the water freezes in the sapwood along the inside and between the cells. The remaining carbon dioxide is then compressed and locked up and the resulting suction draws water from the soil into the roots. The taps that maple sugar producers put into trees would not be dripping during these cold nights. However, when the air warms in the morning, the sapwood ice melts and the carbon dioxide expands, causing a rush of sugary sap to be forced into the tap which is destined to become maple syrup. This process repeats itself day after day when we have cold nights and warm days. The sap flows out through taps and any other wound that may appear in the bark of the tree. At least one of the small animal residents of the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere takes advantage of that ‘leakage’. Red squirrels will chew through the bark layer of the sugar maple and return later to lick up the sugary sap that escapes. When the night air stays above zero and the tree buds begin to open, maple sap collection stops. The short season is over. 

April is 'Birds Laying Eggs Time' - Pnatmuiku's
In the Mi’kmaw calendar, April is Pnatmuiku’s or ‘birds laying eggs time’ and it is at this time of year that the barachois ponds of the Bras d’Or lakes play an important role in kick-starting the next generation of many species. The barrachois ponds, partially enclosed bodies of water rimmed by sandy spits and barrier beaches, are scenic coastal features of the Bras d’Or lakes. These ponds (pitu’we’k) have been culturally and biologically significant for over 10,000 years for L’nu (Mi’kmaq).  Over the last 300 years they have been called tarns by the Scottish settlers, barrachois by the Acadian French and coastal ponds in English. Currently over 450 barrachois ponds exist, ranging in size from less than 0.05 to over 78 hectares and comprising some 12% of the shoreline of the estuary. They provide a safe haven for the early life stages of many species. 

May is 'Frog Croaking Time' - Squoljuiku's
May is a noisy month in the Bras d’Or Biosphere and that is partially due to the desperate songs of amphibians looking for mates. The term ‘amphibian’ is from the ancient Greek term ‘amphibios’ which means ‘both kinds of life’, referring to the young stages living in water and the adult stages living on land. Because amphibian eggs and tadpoles live in freshwater, most of the noisy amorous activity occurs near ponds, marshes and streams. In the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere there are seven resident species of amphibious frogs and toads and the exuberant spring chorus is sustained by five of these, intent on attracting the attention of the opposite sex. The Mi’kmaw word for May is Squoljuiku’s which translates to ‘frog croaking time’. Although we are all familiar with the short and frantic calls of the spring peeper, there are actually several types of frog and a toad which contribute to the spring amphibian chorus in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere.   

June is 'Trees Fully Leafed Time' - Nipniku's
When you walk through a forest in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere, do you see the trees, the forest or both?  For early peoples including Mi’kmaq, forests were their homes and their pharmacies. In the Mi’kmaw calendar, June is Nipniku’s which translates to ‘Trees Fully Leafed Time’. The red maple saplings give us medicine to cure ailments of the eye at this time of the year.  When the emerging leaves turn from green to reddish as they mature, bark is removed by scraping it upwards, starting from the midpoint of the sapling. A small amount of bark is taken and steeped in warm water that has been previously boiled. Two drops are placed in the eye. This treatment has proven particularly effective in delaying or retarding the formation of cataracts. The red maple (Mikmaw:  kmu’jijapiey)  is one of the first native plants in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere to flower in the spring. The leaves begin to appear in late May, pushing the red flowers out to form a mottled carpet on the forest floor. My mother used to say that the brook trout liked to eat the flowers that fell onto the surface of the freshwater streams and lakes. I am not sure that that is the case, but the timing is right. The littering of the flowers on the water surfaces coincides with the time that trout are moving upstream from the ocean to spawn in the cool headwaters of our many waterways. 

In February the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere Reserve Association launched a Geology Curriculum Resource that has been years in the making. ‘An Integrated, Multidisciplinary, Inter-Cultural Curriculum Resource for Elementary Classrooms’ was originally designed by hydrogeologist Lynn Baechler and she guided its’ development with the input of many others.  The resource presents some very comprehensive understandings about the Geology of the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere along with many simple hands-on experiments that will reinforce lessons learned by elementary students. As an intercultural multidisciplinary resource, we follow the guiding principle of Two-Eyed Seeing (Mi’kmaq: Etuaptmumk) brought forward by Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall. This Guiding Principle may be explored further at the Institute for Integrative Science & Health website.

Geology Curriculum Resource has been developed by a committee composed of educators, scientists and planners and will feature Learning Experiences which are a mixture of school and field-based activities designed to provide a matrix of experiences, leading to a holistic appreciation of this unique and special part of the world. It is a valuable resource for teachers and all guides who nurture the love of nature in our young people.
This resource can be downloaded from our website's Resources - Educational Resources page.

Going to New Depths
If you were driving the Bras d'Or Lake Scenic Drive early March you may have seen a colourful crew of people in floater suits drilling holes in the ice in Whycocomagh Bay. They weren’t ice fishers. They were scientists studying the unique chemistry of the brackish waters there. 

At the far western end of the Whycocomagh Bay lies a particularly deep basin (48m at its deepest point), that has attracted the attention of scientists (and fish farmers) since the 1970’s. The upper 15m of the water in this basin exchanges with the surface waters of the larger bay and, when not covered by ice, exchanges oxygen, carbon dioxide and other dissolved gases with the air above it. This surface layer supports the usual soup of plankton and fish found in the sunlit waters of the Bras d’Or Lake, as well as a large Steelhead trout farm. Below 15m depth there is a profound transition in the physical, chemical and biological properties of the water. The temperature plummets and the amount of salt dissolved in the water increases sharply. Both properties cause such a large increase in the density of the water that it forms a fluid surface on which organic material falling from above collects, effectively blocking the passage of light. Jellyfish swarm above this layer, hanging their tentacles into its rich surface to feed.

Oxygen Counts
The bacteria decomposing this organic film consume oxygen, such that by about 18m depth, there is virtually no measurable oxygen dissolved in the water (it is permanently “anoxic”). This condition extends all the way to the seabed, as much as 27m below! In the black, cold, salty water near the bottom, toxic hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) and methane (cow fart smell) accumulate to reach higher concentrations that have ever been measured in a natural marine ecosystem

Marine ecologists and oceanographers have joined scientists from the Bras d’Or Institute at Cape Breton University since 2009 to monitor the waters of the basin several times a year. One of the many questions to arise from all this attention is what happens to the oxygen transition layer when an ice lid is placed over the water surface? Despite all the sampling effort, measurements had only once been made through the ice, in 2015.

Meeting the Challenge
On a gorgeous Friday, March 6th, under a clear sky, mild temperatures and moderate north wind, Wade Googoo helped a team of 8 scientists from CBU and Dalhousie University move a tonne of equipment and people 1,250 m from the ice edge beside the highway to a point on the ice surface directly above the deepest part of the basin. A hole was cut through the 38cm thick layer of ice, and a tripod erected. Over a four hour period, tens of litres of water samples and thousands of measurements were made from surface to bottom. It will take months of meticulous work in high tech laboratories (and student’s brains!) to make sense of these data from a rare sampling day in a remarkable ecosystem in the Bras d’Or Lake Biosphere.

Intentional communities, based on cohousing or ecovillage principles, offer residential models that allow elders to age in place and folks of other generations to thrive with them. Recently, I attended a workshop in Seattle, Washington hosted by the group championing the North West Agrivillage.  Eleven people toured a potential property, wandering around rain soaked land, dreaming of gardens and orchards on an idyllic farmscape.

Author Katie McCamant, one of the two architects credited with introducing cohousing to North America, facilitated the workshop. Thirty-one people explored the development phases of a 35 to 70 household community placed on 200+ acres of preserved prime farmland. There are many hard realities of this ambitious plan.  Skills related to finance, design, engineering, community building and governance are required to get to the finish line. The approach has been tried in many formats, both successfully and unsuccessfully. Fewer than one in ten projects get built, for a wide variety of reasons.

Those interested in further discussions are invited to visit the Cape Breton Intentional Communities Discussion Group on Facebook.