The CLRA National Newsletter for this week features the CLRA Alberta Chapter 2023 Annual Charity Golf Tournament, March Lunch and Learn presentation slides for registrants, 2023 AGM & Conference photo gallery, Alberta Reclamation Practitioner Survey, City of Saskatoon Monitoring Well Standard, career opportunities, and more!
Read MoreWe are proud of our 2023 Conference at the Edmonton Convention Centre from February 22 to 24, 2023, we would like to extend a big thank you to all of our guests, speakers, volunteers, and sponsors for bringing this year’s program to life and we look forward to seeing you again next year.
Read More#CLRANews Highlights
Save the date for the CLRA Alberta Chapter AGM & Conference on Feb 22 to 24, 2023. We are excited to host the 2023 conference in a new location in downtown Edmonton.
The deadline for nominations for the Edward M Watkin Award, IN-TECH Reclamation Awards, The Dr. Jack Winch Early Career Award, and the Linda Jones Memorial Award have been extended to December 31st, 2022.
Are you on the lookout for an exciting career in Reclamation? Be sure to check out several new job postings available with some of our member organizations, including @SUMMIT, An Earth Services Company and @North Shore Environmental Consultants Inc..
#CLRANews Highlights
The Scientific Committee of the RE3 Conference is still accepting new proposals for symposia, workshops, and training courses, until October 3, 2022.
The CLRA has almost met our goal of raising $5000 for the Andrea McEachern Memorial Scholarship. The CLRA and Preston McEachern will match the donation amounts (up to 5K) collected. We are now accepting donations until October 17, 2022.
The deadline for nominations for the Edward M Watkin Award, IN-TECH Reclamation Awards, The Dr. Jack Winch Early Career Award and the Linda Jones Memorial Award have been extended to December 31st, 2022.
#CLRANews Highlights
We are proud of the CLRA Alberta Chapter’s 2022 Conference program in Red Deer and encourage you to check out the presentations and proceedings. Also, check out some photos from the event!
Two Linda Jones Memorial awards are presented annually to students in a reclamation related program at a Canadian institution in recognition of excellence in academic studies which advance the theory, knowledge, or practice of land reclamation. One award will be for a poster presentation and one for an oral presentation. Each award will be for $1000 and a one-year membership in the CLRA.
Please login to update your contact information by September 15th for inclusion in the published CLRA National Membership Directory. The Corporate Member Directory is publicly available on the website and published in the Fall/Winter 2022 Canadian Reclamation Magazine annually.
The CLRA Alberta Chapter hosted the 45th annual AGM and Conference in Red Deer from February May 3-5, 2022.
Presentations & Speakers
In order of appearance in the 2022 Schedule, presentations are linked to approved resources only, please refer to the program for more information on all sessions and to view speaker biographies.
Read MoreVegetation health assessment is used in a wide range of environmental assessment programs such as spill clean-up verification and annual vegetation health assessment at risk-managed contaminated sites.
Timely cost-effective assessments using traditional (boots-on-the-ground) field assessment year after year can be difficult (and subjective) due to high variances in vegetation growth rates and species influenced by meteorological conditions, diverse soil types, and topography. This presentation provides a summary of a proof-of-concept demonstration project that uses the power of artificial intelligence to complete vegetation health assessments. The demonstration project exploits the abilities of machine learning computer scripts to independently recognize, identify, sort, and classify complex patterns.
For this initiative, a supervised Machine Learning System (MLS) is trained with a known dataset of vegetation, examples of photos that correspond to vegetation feature classes that require identification and classification. The training dataset is created by subject matter experts who use ground-truth vegetation assessment data to ensure that the training dataset inputted to MLS is accurate. In addition, unsupervised MLS classification analyses are completed and compared against the supervised MLS classification outputs to minimize the introduction of human bias.
MLS scans ultra-high-resolution visible wavelengths of georeferenced air-photos obtained from low altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flights to identify and classify the desired vegetation features by matching the vegetation patterns in the UAV photo with the training dataset. MLS is programmed to automatically scan and classify billions of pinpoint locations before it finalizes its prediction. The MLS automation requires little human intervention, enabling it to review air-photo(s) covering areas ranging from thousands of square metres (UAV photo) to millions of square kilometres (satellite photo).
This presentation will also cover how artificial neural network technology can be used to leverage the information from the MLS and site-specific environmental investigation data to solve perplexing real-world problems.
Read MoreDay 1 (Sept 16) started the conference off with a workshop on ‘Landform Design for Sustainable Mine Reclamation’.
Day 2 (Sept 17) was a fabulous and highly informative tour of the former Sullivan Mine in Kimberley, British Columbia. Sullivan Mine was once a major producer of zinc, lead, and silver. After operating for nearly 100 years, it is now an example of a successful mine closure — a process that included collaboration between Teck and the local community of Kimberley to create lasting benefits.
