Welcome to the Sir Winston Churchill High School Nose Hill blog. We are a school of about 2000 students in the northwest corner of Calgary, a city of just over 1 million people in southern Alberta, Canada. Calgary is situated on the boundary between two biomes, grassland and boreal forest, making the study of ecology perhaps more interesting than in most Canadian cities.
Nose Hill is one of the largest urban parks in the world and it is only a 20 minute walk from Sir Winston Churchill High School. This proximity allows our students, with the permission of the city, to engage in detailed and careful ecological studies of the park. In constructing this blog, students will demonstrate their proficiency in making scientific measurements and extracting meaning from those observations in an ecological framework. Our hope is that the availability of this information will clarify the ecological structure of Nose Hill and how that structure changes season to season and year to year Ultimately, we should have a resource that can assist those charged with the management and preservation of Nose Hill Park, and a document describing the biodiversity in the park.
Nose Hill is under a great deal of pressure from different user groups. Each group changes the park in ways that have not been documented or tracked as time passes. With climate change, new species arrive in the park, and with disturbance, some species are extirpated. Frequently, new invasive species take hold in the park. We hope to document these changes in biodiversity and evaluate the effectiveness of different management techniques which may be used to maintain the park in as natural a condition as possible given that a million people surround it.
Come with us as we explore the fascinating story of Nose Hill.
Welcome to the Sir Winston Churchill High School Nose Hill blog. We are a school of about 2000 students in the northwest corner of Calgary, a city of just over 1 million people in southern Alberta, Canada. Calgary is situated on the boundary between two biomes, grassland and boreal forest, making the study of ecology perhaps more interesting than in most Canadian cities.
