Hi Everyone! My name is Emily Piggott and for those of you that do not know, I am working as the Summer Student for the OLCS in partnership with the Youth Conservation Corps at the Clean Foundation. I am a recent graduate of StFX University where I completed my Honours in Chemistry, and will be continuing my education next year at Carleton University with a Masters in Environmental Engineering. I am very excited at this opportunity to become involved in the OLCS as I have grown up in the neighborhood and consider the lake a very special place.
Each week I will be posting a short blog to keep everyone updated on my progress. This week, I was trained on the WetPro data collection instrument with Jim and tested all of the sites at the lake. This data was sent out via email to show the impact the AquaGo has had. Additionally, I have started the removal of some of the invasive species around the path area, you may have seen the piles at the Beckfoot entrance and at the other end of the lake. These species include the Multiflora Rose and Himalayan Balsam, both of which are quite aggressive and threatening to the indigenous plants in the area! With this removal, I have also begun to tag the locations these invasive species are found around the lake with a GPS system, which will be used to construct a map. The idea behind the map is that I hope to make it easier to identify and monitor the growth of these invasive species year-to-year and thus better control the unwanted spread.
I will be working at and around the lake for the remainder of the summer on many different projects and would love to answer any questions about my work or to just chat about the lake in general, so please feel free to say hi whenever you see me!
If you would like to know more about what I am doing this summer around the lake, check out this article written by community member Kate Watson:
http://welovedartmouth.com/meet-emily-piggott-summer-student-on-oathill-lake/