The budget on Tuesday was not a good one for Canadian Science.  The Conservative government has followed its past policy of not supporting Canadian Science.  They renewed the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and supported University infrastructure.  However, the Foundation for Innovation and Infrastructure do not support laboratory operations.  Without this money, science activity withers and fewer students get trained.

For the North, it was a special disaster.  The International Polar Year is winding up.  Most northern researchers are looking at 80-90% reduction in operating funds in the 2010/11 polar year.  Yet, there is nothing in the budget to address this. Without funds available in 2009 to support 10/11 activity, we can count on 2010/11 being a dismal year for Northern research.

The commitment to build a northern research station is welcome but once again, what use is infrastructure if there are no funds to use it.  The Conservatives transferred money to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada for northern reseach but INAC’s mandate is not innovation and much of northern research is not directly linked to INAC’s mandate.

The Conservative budget is even more disappointing because of its missed human resource opportunity.  As has been pointed out to them, there are a wide range of peer-reviewed research projects that were not funded because of a lack of funds.  These projects have been vetted by the Tri-Councils and peers.  These projects all had the goal of training Canadians in the knowledge economy.  If funds had been provided in this budget, Science activity could have exploded in 2009 providing 1000’s of training positions for laid off knowledge workers.  This would have provided Canada with a cohort of highly trained individuals who would be ready to re-enter the economy in 2011.

Instead, we will have empty buildings and our best and brightest will once again be leaving for Obama land.

Contaminants become “trapped” in soil over time because of various chemical and biological processes (e.g., aging, weathering, sequestration, adsorption, degradation, etc.). Trapped contaminants are not readily available for uptake into soil organisms and do not cause even if it is detectible by chemical methods. Therefore, contaminant concentration can exceed established safety standards but represent minimal risk to soil organisms if the contaminant is trapped.

Growing earthworms in contaminated soil is a common method to evaluate the toxic effects of contaminants in soil; however, this process is time consuming. Alternatively, contaminant concentration in soil can be determined by chemical extraction and analysis. This approach is fast, but harsh chemical extractions often over estimate the risk because contaminants trapped in soil may be extracted as well thereby suggesting danger when there is none. Arguably, it is better safe (i.e., over estimating potential danger) than sorry; however, cleaning up soils that pose no actual danger wastes resources that can be used to remediate real problem areas. We designed the Simulated Earthworm Gut (SEG) to mimic the earthworm’s gastrointestinal fluid composition under the theory that soil contaminants that are extractable by the SEG would be representative of the contaminant exposure that an earthworm would experience.

Wai Ma

Petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC) are the most common type of pollutant in polar regions.  The occurrence of PHC spills has a widespread geographic distribution throughout the Canadian Arctic and Circumpolar North, as well as several reported spills at various Antarctic research stations primarily located along the coast of Antarctica.  Due to the widespread and common occurrence of PHC spills in polar regions, much effort has been put forth in the area of bioremediation in cold regions.  As the technology emerges for cleaning up these contaminated sites, new questions associated with the clean up of these sites also arises.  How clean is clean enough?  What is the most sensitive part of the ecosystem?  What biological activity should be monitored to ensure that the ecosystem is being protected?  Do the environmental properties associated with polar regions increase the sensitivity of the ecosystem?  The ecotoxicity of petroleum hydrocarbon spills in polar regions is a growing concern and thus is a focal point for soil toxicology research in our lab group.

The environmental conditions that may increase the sensitivity of polar ecosystems to contaminants include sub-zero temperatures and limited liquid water content.  In polar regions, the amount of liquid water in the soil varies dramatically with the change in soil temperature.  However, even when the soil is frozen, a small amount of liquid water remains in the soil, which allows microorganisms living in the soil to remain biologically active.  The activity of these microorganisms is important, as they supply the nutrients required for plant growth, plants in turn supplies the food for primary consumers, and primary consumers supply the food for secondary consumer.  Therefore, you can see that if there are detrimental effects to soil microorganisms, the effects could manifest themselves up the food chain.  Thus it is important to protect the very basic function and structure of the soil ecosystem. We evaluated the toxicity of PHC soil contamination at an Antarctic research station by examining the effects on microorganisms.  We found that the most sensitive indicator of soil contamination was community composition (the number of different species living in the soil), followed by soil respiration and nitrification activity.  Changes in liquid water content did not seem to affect the toxicity of PHC to the soil microorganisms but it did increase the variability of the measured parameters.

Alexis Schafer

Soils are the safeguard of the western Canada economy.  Every time you pass by an inland terminal, you should see the soil scientists who make sure that there is enough water and fertilizer to grow the wheat, canola, flax and lentils that fill those terminals.  As you eat you steak, chicken or pork tonight you should see the soil scientists who make sure that manure doesn’t get into our food or water.  As you drive home tonight, soil scientists will have made sure that the Canadian oil sands have a safe place to store their excess sulfur and that these oil sand operators can rebuild the forest are demolished to get to the oil sands.  Your house will have been built out of trees that soil scientists made sure could grow. Your home tonight will be heated thanks to soil scientists who figure out how to clean up soil that has been polluted by pipeline spills or test wells.  And finally, as you put your kids to bed tonight, you should know that soil scientists are working feverishly to prevent our world from reach the tipping point of climate change which would see the prairies dry to a dustbowl and the Lake of the Woods become a pond.

Soil scientists secure the foundation of our western Canadian economic juggernaut; we help renewable resource companies renew their resource, reduce environmental impact of our non-renewable resource companies and uncover key starting blocks for technology companies.  To do this, soil scientists go to the field and dig a hole.

In fact, you could say that our western economy is based on soil holes.  A soil scientist might dig over a thousand holes in one year.  At each hole, he or she will take some soil, throw it on the back of a truck, or a helicopter, or an ice breaker, or even a simple back pack.  Soil scientists have been doing this for a hundred years or more and the hard part has always been… what to do with the soil/plant/insect when you get back to the lab.

These days we have fancy machines in our labs that can tell us just about anything you want to know about the soil.  For example, some machines take 1 millionth of a liter of soil water, pressurize it to 4000 pounds per square inch, run it through a nano-engineered piece of tubing and then subject it to laser bombardment.  From this, I can tell you if your well water is going to be poisoned.

So the machines are useful but they are also… delicate.  So delicate, that we don’t like to bring our mud, boots and shovels into the same room as the fancy machine.  That is why we need a field building.  This is the building that from which we launch our Antarctic and Arctic expeditions, it’s also the same building we organize things to take to Tisdale for the week.  It is to this very building that we will bring our samples, dry them out, organize and store them, and clean ourselves up in.  Until our samples have been processed, our fancy machines can’t be used and we can’t tell you how much fertilizer needs to be applied this year.

Soil scientists are there when the rubber hits the road in Western Canada.  We are the field scientists who make sure that the western economy keeps on rolling. We need a bridge, a bridge between our university ivory tower and the real world.  The new field facility is that bridge. If you help build it, I promise you, we will be there.  For you. Your neighbour. Your kids.  Soil science secures the future.