LabEx 2008 Day 4 and Day 5 Stewardship

7 "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; 8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. 9 Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? 10 In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. 11 Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food? 12 Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? 13 "To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his. Job 12 (NIV)

And so we did. On the second last day of LabEx 2008 we went out for a field trip onto the ABU property. ABU was blessed by the donation of a family farm back in the 1990's which prompted a move and expansion in 1996. The farm property is divided by a stream called the Northwest Branch of Hall's Creek in some maps and Gorge Brook in other maps. The stream comes from back in the hills upstream from the ABU property and is affected by the surface mining that occurs there. It then flows past agricultural and residential properties until it reaches the ABU property at the north-west corner behind the baseball diamonds. It continues in a south easterly direction across the property until it reaches the woods behind the Residence where it is forced to makes tight turn by a sandstone cliff it then continues in a roughly south west direction down to the Trans Canada Highway where it leaves the property via a culvert under the highway. The stream is mostly covered by a canopy of trees during its passage over the entire ABU property except where it flows through a culvert under an access road.

We just want to address a simple question. Can we determine if the stream and it's environment is weak, healthy or normal? To do that we head out into the property to measure and collect and then combine our data to develop a holistic understanding of the stream environment.

Someone should have brought her boots.

This is how you remove a core sample from a tree without breaking the core or losing the bark end.

Julie and Chris show a team how to collect samples from a bug trap.

Sebastien shows a group how to determine the dissolved oxygen in a sample of stream water.

Finally, with all the data collected and tabulated it was time to try to make sense of it all.

It would appear, when it is all said and done, that the stream that runs though the ABU property is in good health. We can say this because:

1] the biological sample collection from all three sites included (indeed were dominated by) specimens that were classified as "sensitive". This years collection included a salamander, a massive diving beetle, several small fish and a monster dragonfly larva among a huge collection of creepy crawlies.

2] the tree canopy is intact over most of the property and the tree cores indicate that over half the trees are currently creating tree rings with the highest annual ring width in the past 80 years.

3] The pH (just a bit above 7) and oxygen concentration are close to normal readings for a healthy stream.

The teams took the chance to clean up the property a bit by hauling garbage as they found it out of the study areas. Trash this year included two vintage Coca-Cola bottles, a golf ball, a multi-story birdhouse and a pair of sunglasses in perfect condition.

We studied the stream environment and left it in better condition than we found it and in doing so we followed the instructions of Scripture to ask questions of Creation without fear and found our role as stewards for Creation so that it may continue to tell it's unique story.