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My Last Field Season

2017; Ecological Society of America; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/bes2.1323

2327-6096

John S. Millar,

Research Data Management Practices

My first field season was when I was turned loose to poke around outdoors when I was about 3 years old, so I suspect that my last field season will be when I die. However, this is my final formal field season as an academic and my “field work” will mostly involve cleaning up the last of the leftover research equipment from the storeroom at the Barrier Lake Field Station in the Kananaskis Valley of the Canadian Rockies in southwestern Alberta. I didn't have a research crew on site in 2012, but it takes a long time to throw out many years worth of discarded equipment. So far the earliest “archeological treasure” is a storage box belonging to Les who graduated in 1979. Les didn't even work at the Barrier Lake Field Station and I have no idea how his box got there. While reflecting on field research over five decades, it is easy to conjure up lists of publications, research grants, and graduate students, but the logistics of working in the field keep coming to mind. The recollections of former graduate students similarly focus on stories about accommodations and transportation. Once upon a time field studies were done under much more rustic conditions than today. There were very few field stations and people working in the bush just stayed in the bush. In my case, my first formal field seasons were during my M.Sc. program at UBC under the supervision of J. Mary Taylor in 1966–1968. Her very first graduate student, I studied red squirrels on Vancouver Island and in the interior of BC. My transportation, accommodation, and field lab consisted of a Volkswagen Beetle. Anyone familiar with the Beetle might wonder how accommodation and a lab might fit, but space can be freed up if the passenger and back seats are removed and replaced with a plywood floor cut to fit. That provides enough space to put a sleeping bag length-ways on the passenger side, with room behind the driver's seat for a one-burner Optimus stove and a cooler for food. Research equipment was also rustic, consisting of a shotgun and 0.22-caliber rifle for collecting specimens and a jug of formaldehyde in the trunk for preserving samples until I got back to campus to process them (Fig. 1). Field-work conditions improved considerably when I started my Ph.D. research on pikas with Fred Zwickel at the University of Alberta (U of A) in 1968. At the time, the U of A had money. They had a university fleet of vehicles and every year I could sign out a new pick-up truck, at no cost to me, complete with a credit card for gas. However, they were basic two-wheel drive trucks and tended to get stuck in mud and slide off the road (Fig. 2). When things got really bad, I used my Volkswagen Beetle because it had relatively big wheels with the engine in the back for ballast. It could be driven anywhere. Typically, the pick-up truck was no longer “new” when returned at the end of the summer, but there was always another one available the next year. Accommodation was potentially better too. The Gorge Creek Biological Station (now R. B. Miller Station) had rustic but permanent bunk houses and a kitchen cabin, hydro, and running water but, unfortunately, we were not permitted to stay there because the station had a “no-wives” policy. There had been problems with wives in the past. With husbands in the field all day wives in camp were bored and tended to squabble among themselves, causing tensions among the other residents of the station. The station was off-limits to us, but we could still visit for a hot shower and store equipment there. Our real accommodation was a summer tent site west of Gibraltar Mountain, near the headwaters of the Sheep River. Our camp had a tent with a wooden floor and a Mighty Midget wood stove with a three-inch stove pipe for heat. We had a storage tent and a covered kitchen area for cooking on a Coleman stove. We also had a garbage can in the ground as a “refrigerator” for fresh food, but our water came from the river and the bathroom was a hole in the ground (Figs. 3, 4). Moving to the University of Western Ontario in London in 1971, research could only be done locally because my first research grant was only $2,000 (about $11,000 today) and graduate students had to live at home. By the mid-1970s, we had sufficient funds to work elsewhere and, from then on, research was done at field stations. The first external locations in the 1970s included the AECL Nuclear Research Station at Pinawa, Manitoba, where they had an environmental monitoring program and dormitory rooms for visiting scientists. The second location was at Heart Lake, NWT, where Bill Fuller had permanent buildings for his boreal forest studies on small mammals. Everybody at the U of A had a private research station in those days. Finally, we set up shop at the University of Calgary (U of C) Field Station at Kananaskis where dorm rooms, duplexes, and three bedroom trailers were available, along with a permanent kitchen and kitchen staff. Duncan was the first to work at Kananaskis in 1978 and he was able to hire a summer assistant, lease a vehicle for the summer, stay in the dorm, and eat in the dining room because he had a substantial research grant from the Canadian Sportsman Show. His grant was for only 2 years and the Sportsman Show research program was canceled in favor of more boat shows, never to return. Things got tighter for Duncan after that and he had to buy his own truck. Every year since, the Kananaskis research crew has stayed in rental accommodation where they did their own cooking. For most years, one of the trailers served as Mousecrew Headquarters. There was hydro and running water (heat, fridge, stove, and bathroom), but no phone, no TV, and sparse radio reception. Even after the invention of cell phones, there was no cell phone reception. The trailers were condemned as unfit for human habitation in 2008, after which a two-bedroom duplex served that same purpose. Invading mice, squirrels, and woodrats were always a problem in the trailer, and the last time I looked the woodrats had made it their personal turf, complete with piles of droppings. Woodrat studies could be done on-site today, instead of hiking up to bluffs in the dark. Daily life consisted of checking live-traps at daybreak, time in the afternoon and weekends for lab work and recreational activities, and setting live-traps at sunset. Recreational activities were in-house. Some of us mousers thought the trailer needed a bit more curb appeal. I can't remember who actually ponied up the cash, but we were soon in possession of a fine pair of plastic pink flamingos from the Canmore Canadian Tire Store. These enjoyed a brief tenure outside the front of the trailer, where they clearly were the envy of the entire station. Sadly, this envy brought out the baser instincts among the less-evolved denizens (rumour has it, the birders from the University of Calgary), who staged a brazen abduction of the female of the pair. We were bereft and distraught. We posted LOST notices throughout the camp—“Have You Seen Me?” notices even appeared on the milk cartons in the cafeteria, but to no avail. Soon after, we started receiving mysterious, anonymous envelopes in the mail (remember this was when snail mail still ruled the world) with photographs of our beloved Bernice in various locations around Canmore apparently “enjoying her freedom”—hanging out at the top of Barrier Mountain; posing in the parking lots of various seedy drinking establishments, etc. We never saw her again. Her mate, Leroy pined away, developed a drinking problem and eventually disappeared (we think into a field equipment storage locker behind some mousetraps). I'd like to believe she went on to live a happy life, but it's hard to have closure over an event like this. Godspeed, Bernice, wherever you are (Figs. 5, 6). Having research vehicles at Kananaskis was always an important part of any field season because trapping sites were mostly remote. In the early days, there was a lot of freedom as to where study sites could be located and when they could be accessed, but vehicle availability severely restricted our work. Funds from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) could not be used to purchase vehicles on the philosophy that such vehicles might be used for personal travel. That meant that students had to own their own vehicles to work there. Many students owned vehicles in those days, mostly clunkers, but sound enough to be driven from Ontario to Alberta in the spring, access study sites all summer, and return to Ontario in the fall. And students knew how to fix and maintain them because they were personal vehicles. Still, some didn't survive the summer. Jim knew how to keep a vehicle operational, but even he couldn't do miracles. Val remembers riding in his car when the floor boards were so rusted out that there was nowhere to plant her feet. His car died in the summer of 1982 and even he, being mechanically inclined, couldn't fix it. We towed it to the Canmore dump where he rescued all the parts worth salvaging. I have no idea how he got the spare parts back to Ontario (Fig. 7). Other personal research vehicles met sad fates without even being on site. Graham had his own ratmobile on site in 1985 and it gave him a lot of trouble, including a leaky radiator that required a 5 gallon can of water for outgoing trips to study sites so the radiator had enough coolant for the return trip. Sometimes it was a close call (Fig. 8). The next year Graham decided to give his vehicle a rest for the summer so he could get a trip to the Maritimes out of it before moving home overseas. He left it in the parking lot of his apartment block for the summer and used our “regular” vehicles for his research in Alberta. Unfortunately, folks in his apartment block in London assumed his car was abandoned and stripped it of all useable parts before his return in September. I recall taking him to Denzel, my used car salesman at the time. Graham spotted one with a list price of $2,500.00. Denzel asked him how much money he had, maybe $2,300.00. As I recall, Denzel gave it to him for $2,000.00. There is value added in knowing mechanics and used car salesmen and I trusted them over new car salesmen every time. Graham made his holiday trip to the Maritimes safely in his newly purchased clunker. Over time, fewer and fewer students could afford their own vehicles, but the cost of buying air fares to Alberta and leasing vehicles for the summer would have killed whatever salary and food budget I could provide for the summer. To alleviate the problem, I personally bought a used nine-passenger van from Denzel, and paid it off by charging mileage to my research grant (claiming mileage was OK with NSERC). Every spring we packed up the van and drove to Alberta. By alternating drivers the trip could be done with two to three nights on the road, depending on head-winds or tail-winds on the prairies. It was a bonding experience for all involved. I participated in those drives for several years until we had a grant large enough for me to send the students off on the road trip, after which I would fly out to meet them upon their arrival (Figs. 9, 10). In the late 1980s, NSERC decided that a research vehicle was a valid piece of field research equipment, opening the chance to apply for one through an equipment grant. It took me four tries to receive funds for our first NSERC vehicle, and only after I tried to meet every single one of their criteria. Eventually I met all their preferred criteria (made in Canada, economical, to be used in Canada, no bells and whistles) and we got our very first research-funded vehicle. It was a basic Jeep Cherokee with enough space for four passengers and some storage, but hardly suitable as a field vehicle. It lasted only a few years. After a while, most students did not own personal vehicles and many who had never owned a vehicle had never maintained one. Some had never driven more than a few hundred km on any trip and the crew always had someone who had never driven on a gravel road. From the early 1990s, we always two mousecrew vehicles, a primary one being relatively new and sound and the secondary one bought used. Secondary vehicles were often nicknamed “Boogermobiles” so, after the first (Booger I), we had many others. Secondary vehicles especially required frequent maintenance and, prior to spring departure to Alberta, I would have all vehicles fully serviced by Bill, my mechanic at the time, with instructions to fix anything that might break down during 4 months of abuse. Every spring Bill would do a thorough tune-up for the season, often a $1,000.00 investment per vehicle to make sure everything was OK. I then instructed new members of the crew about how to keep an eye on things. “Here's how you check tire pressure, here's the spare tire, here's the window-washer fluid tank, here's the radiator tank, here's the oil dipstick,” etc. Unfortunately, some students thought that car maintenance involved taking it through a car wash and all of this was beyond their comprehension, which lead to some hilarious (but potentially fatal!) situations. This required some formal rules for drivers, as indicated by this late-era vehicle-use policy: These instructions were stored in every vehicle, along with insurance and ownership papers. The instructions still look clear to me, but were apparently not clear enough for everybody. This was just a note of warning to encourage students to drive safely and avoid paying fines. After all, an extra night on the road was covered by the summer budget, right? I rarely heard about traffic offenses but I think they occurred regularly. I recall one return trip from Kananaskis in the Mousevan with a summer assistant behind the wheel in northern Ontario. She was driving well over the speed limit entering Dryden and got a speeding ticket. We stopped for gas in town and then she got another speeding ticket from the same cop on the way out of town. That cost her a few bucks. I know this for sure because I was trying to nap in the back seat and the police sirens kept waking me up. Many students remember digging out of ditches while their mousecrew mates stood around watching. This was based on the simple idea that a repair bill is a lot cheaper than a replacement vehicle. There were many such instances, but the best one is from when we had a project in Kootenay National Park sponsored by the G8 Legacy Fund at the University of Calgary. We had a 1990 Oldsmobile (the Booger Ark) dedicated to the daily trip from Kananaskis to Kootenay and back. When new, the Booger Ark was a luxury car with plush seats and power everything and, although it had well over 300,000 km on the odometer when we bought it in the mid-1990s, it was in good shape. In 2005, Yeen Ten was in charge of the Kootenay Burn project and Michelle was her summer assistant. One day early in the summer, Michelle drove back to the field station and the car wasn't sounding right. I asked if anything happened and she said no. It was due for an oil change, so I took it into Canmore, told them it had been sounding a little weird. I came back an hour later and they told me the car was a write off. The entire under-carriage had been really beaten up. They asked if we had hit anything and I, having just driven it across the country alone, was wracking my brain trying to come up with any scenario that could explain this. I was able to drive it back to the field station and take a look at it for myself there, and sure enough, the oil pan had a dent in it the size of a bread plate, and the exhaust system was twisted all to hell. When Michelle came back that day she fessed up and said that she hit a rock while driving. Eye witness accounts have her being a bit of a tunnel-vision driver, and this rock was in the middle of the road and visible from a long distance away. Apparently she hit the rock, and it clanged around underneath the car for a while until it got stuck and she just dragged it for a while. After finally stopping, they got out and took a look at the damage, at which point a ranger came by and helped them remove the rock. It is a minor miracle that they got the car back to the field station. No mechanic in Canmore would fix the car because there were no oil pans available for a vehicle of that vintage in Alberta. Jack found one in Ontario, shipped it out, and I replaced it myself (the most hands on mechanic thing I've ever done), but before we could get the exhaust system fixed, the torrential rains of 2005 washed away the road between the trailer and the exit, so we had to abandon the car above the wash-out for most of the field season. Later in the summer, the driveway was fixed and we got the exhaust fixed and the car made the trip back across the country. The Booger Ark lasted another two field seasons. In the spring of 2008 our mechanics refused to work on it because it would cost $3,000–4,000 to fix and they couldn't guarantee it would last the summer. So they sold us a Booger GrandAm for $5,000. Jack I think I did a bit of damage to the Jeep. I'm OK but have gone to the clinic for a check-up anyhow I'll call the police. As it turns out, Jamie had rolled the Jeep off Powder Face Trail and it was toast. He claimed he was driving only 25 km/hour, but one wonders….. Anyhow, he got the police report and the insurance paid enough for a second-hand replacement for the next season (Fig. 11). Sometimes students panicked and forgot all about the crash policy. Neala was driving home with the mousecrew in September 1996 when I got a frantic phone call from somewhere west of Sudbury. “We creamed a moose!!!” With visions of a moose coming through the windshield I asked if everybody was OK. “Yes.” I asked if the car could be driven. “Yes.” I told her to get a police report and contact the office when she got back. When she returned to campus she reported that the police laughed at her and refused to issue a report. I went to the parking lot to check it out for myself. It had a broken headlight. No other damage. The comfort of driving out west was best described as “surfing with the boog,” since once you hit a bump, the whole car would bounce up and down for an alarming period of time. I always thought that this was due to the age of the Booger and dodgy shocks, but it would stay with you so that when you crashed for the night somewhere on the prairies, you would still be “surfing” even when lying down. The best part about this was when we got back to London, we were informed by your “tame” mechanic that the car was not actually attached to the frame at the back end, and had it not been for the weight of the field equipment, the whole back end may have come loose. One spring, a new graduate student and a new assistant (I don't recall the names or the year) were driving west on the Trans-Canada route. The vehicle had a full tune-up and four new tires prior to departure and I gave them the maintenance instructions. Somewhere in northern Ontario they decided that the radial tires looked soft, so they found an air hose and pumped the tires up nice and round. They didn't check the pressure, but it was probably over 60 lb pressure when 32 lb is recommended. All four tires were ruined when they arrived in Alberta and the trip must have felt like they were driving on ping-pong balls. They were lucky to make it all the way. On another occasion, I had a new student who drove a Booger to Alberta and was having a successful field season. After 4,000 km to get there and another 3 months of driving around the mountains, she had driven safely for about 15,000 km. I arrived in early August to see how things were going, and casually asked about the last oil change on the Booger. Oil change? What's that? So I explained to her again about oil changes and dip sticks and sent her out to check it. She came back and happily reported that everything was OK because there was no oil on the stick! Sigh…….. That last, or near last, summer for the good ol' Ark should be called the year of tires. Just about every time we drove on a gravel road we would get a flat tire. After being stranded in a variety of scenarios we began carrying two spare tires on rims for all of our excursions. One day, on our way back from a run to co-op for oats and sunflower seeds we decided to drive back via hwy 68 rather than take the TransCanada. I can't remember the reasoning. Perhaps there was a closure on the TransCanada, or maybe we planned to check trap lines on hwy 68 and thought it would be more efficient. We contemplated the risk of flat tires, but because we were well practiced at changing tires and because we had two spares on hand, we concluded that the benefits outweighed the risk. Really, what were the chances of getting three flat tires? Well, that day it turned out the odds were 100%. In the mid-2000s, NSERC changed the rules for equipment grants and split the equipment budget for the Ecology and Evolution GSC between “lab” and “field” studies. Applications for vehicles were no longer in competition with applications for lab equipment, making funds for vehicles readily available. For decades, our two research vehicles were the only ones in the parking lot during winter. All of a sudden the department was paying insurance on 19 vehicles, ranging from ATVs to big 4×4 trucks. Virtually every ecologist now owned a truck whether they really needed one or not. But the good times are over. NSERC canceled its Equipment Grant Program last year, and none of those trucks will be replaced using NSERC funds. Meanwhile, we had a good run with research vehicles, with access to them improving slowly but surely over the years. And the last two vehicles? The Ford Taurus and the GrandAm sat in the UWO parking lot last summer so I decided to sell them. Because they were owned, licensed, and insured by the university we had to sell them through Assets Disposal. The university mechanics deemed them unfit to drive and they went to the scrap yard. I'm sure we could have gotten another couple of field seasons out of them. So why quit now? After all, I still have research funding and could finance a couple more field seasons. The answer is quite simple. After so many years in the business, our accommodation has never burned down and there have been no driving fatalities. I think it's a good idea to quit while I'm ahead. Besides, with no obligations or responsibilities, I can poke around outdoors any time I want.