I spent the last week of August in Nááts’ihch’oh and Nahanni conducting Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) sampling. CABIN is a nationally standardized protocol for the collection of benthic macroinvertebrates and stream information in order to monitor stream health. This involves tasks such as kicking little stream critters off of rocks into a net, measuring the stream depth, width and speed, collecting water samples, taking direct steam measurements, and reaching into freezing cold streams and pulling out 100 pebbles to measure them. This can help to identify if a stream is healthy and if it is changing over time. We also collected environmental DNA samples, which is a really promising emerging technology.
In practice, this meant a week of flying around in a helicopter to scenic locations. I already sorted and uploaded a bunch of photos to facebook, so if you haven’t seen them yet, here they are.
And here’s a bonus exclusive video for our blog readers: flying around Nahanni in a helicopter.