Report by Alan Day

First of all, many thanks to the large number of volunteers (over 30) who logged over 500 man-hours keeping the trail clear and well-blazed, inspecting and writing reports on each section, and/or repairing or constructing bridges and boardwalks. Thanks to your efforts the trail is in excellent shape.

Special thanks to Tom Friesen who assisted me in coordinating efforts on the wilder northern sections, Dave Potten who looked after similar sections in the south, Bob McGee who kept our blazes fresh and of course to the Trail Captains (TC’s) and Trail Maintenance Leaders (TML’s) who are the backbone of the maintenance system.

Special note. It’s not too late to join this group of volunteers and look after your own section – the work involved could range from inspecting and reporting twice a season (TC) to doing some maintenance, calling in for help when needed (TML). Please email me (aday@uwo.ca) if interested.

Construction and repair of our bridges and boardwalks. During the year we:-

• replaced 3 narrow metal bridges with boardwalks,
• strengthened the bridge off Bell’s Rd,
• repositioned the Sharon creek bridge (damaged and moved by floodwaters),
• cabled several bridges in Komoka P.P. to prevent them being washed away,
• replaced handrails on the stairway in Komoka P.P. (thanks to Dayton Hypes),
• built new handrails on a bridge that previously only had a rope support,
• repositioned a bridge in the north displaced when a ravine got washed out,
• built a new small bridge over another ravine in the north.

We hope to complete the seasons’ work by installing steps in several steep locations with treacherous footing

Inventory of structures. All of the 43 structures – bridges and boardwalks - that have been built on our trail – many in the last few years have been cataloged and labeled. This will be useful in reporting on and fixing any problems as they age.

Trail clearing. Maintenance ‘blitzes’ were held in mid-June, mid-July and early September in which a number of volunteers as well as regular TC’s and TML’s cleared the entire wilder parts of the trail outside the city. Our volunteers are now well versed with mowers, brushcutters, weed whackers, scythe, loppers, bowsaw and chainsaw!

Hogweed Report. Virtually all potential Giant Hogweed plants that have been reported so far turned out to be less noxious relatives such as Cow Parsley or Angelica - so at present we do not seem to have much of a problem.

.

Alan Day, Trail Maintenance Director.

Healthy Living Partnership Middlesex-London

Thames Valley Trail Association Inc.

SATURDAY MORNING WALKS

Each walk will begin at 9:00 a.m. from the meeting place listed below and will take approximately one hour. All walks are free. Come on out. Have lots of fun walking these beautiful trails and parks all within our City of London.

Families with children welcome. Except for the parks, the following trails will be too rugged for strollers. Wear good boots as there may be mud, roots or rocks. Please leave dogs at home. For more information call John Clark. 519-641-0442 p = Hilly trails

WINTER 2010/11 SCHEDULE

Date	Location	Meeting Place
Sep. 4	Gibbons Park	Gibbons Park at the west end of Victoria Street
Sep. 11	Warbler Woods	Warbler Woods car park, Commissioners Rd., Byron	p
Sep. 18	Springbank Park W.	West end parking lot, off Commissioners Road
Sep. 25	Sifton Bog	NW end of Super Store car park, Oxford St. W.	p
Oct. 2	Greenway Park	Greenside Ave., first car park on the right
Oct. 9	Meadowlily Woods	Sports Fields, Commissioners Rd., East of Highbury	p
Oct. 16	North Branch	North London Sports Field, West end of Kipps Lane
Oct. 23	South Branch	Chelsea Green Park, west side of Adelaide Street	p
Oct. 30	Harris Park	Behind the Kiwanis Seniors Community Centre, 78 Riverside Dr.
Nov. 6	Gibbons Park	Gibbons Park at the west end of Victoria Street
Nov. 13	Euston Park	South end of Phyllis St., Off of Emery St., West of Wharncliffe Rd.	p
Nov. 20	Springbank Park East	Springbank Gardens, Wonderland Rd., Lower car park.
Nov. 27	Attawandaron Trail	London Museum of Archaeology, Attawandaron Rd.	p
Dec. 4	Kilally Meadows	East end of Windermere Rd. East of Adelaide St.
Dec. 11	Medway Creek	North West corner Springett Car Park, UWO, off Western Rd.	p
Dec. 18	Sifton Bog	SW corner of Super Store parking lot, Oxford St. W of Hyde Park Rd.	p
Dec. 25	No walk today
Jan. 1	Springbank Park West	West end parking lot, off Commissioners Rd.
Jan 8	South Branch	Chelsea Green Park, west side of Adelaide Street	p
Jan 15	South Branch Park East end	South end of Pottersburg Pollution Plant Rd., South from the Hamilton Rd. and Gore Rd. intersection
Jan 22	Westminster Ponds	Behind the Information Centre, Wellington Rd.	p
Jan 29	Harris Park	Behind the Kiwanis Seniors Community Centre, 78 Riverside Dr.
Feb. 5	Gibbons Park	Gibbons Park at the west end of Victoria Street
Feb. 12	Euston Park	South end of Phyllis St., Off of Emery St., West of Wharncliffe Rd.	p
Feb. 19	Springbank Park East	Springbank Gardens, Wonderland Rd., Lower car park.
Feb. 26	Medway Creek	North West corner Springett Car Park, UWO, off Western Rd.	p
Mar. 5	Greenway Park	Greenside Ave., first car park on the right
Mar. 12	Fox Hollow	Jaycee Park car park, Aldersbrook Rd., East of Aldersbrook Gate	p
Mar. 19	North Branch	North London Sports Field, West end of Kipps Lane
Mar. 26	Westminster Ponds	Behind the Information Centre, Wellington Rd.	p

Paddling the North Bruce-Isthmus Bay

Carbon Credit Sham

CO2 Emissions Worldwide Simulation

CO2 emissions, birth & death rates by country, simulated real-time: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Carbon Offsets

Carbon offset

A carbon offset is a financial instrument aimed at a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon offsets are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO₂e) and may represent six primary categories of greenhouse gases. One carbon offset represents the reduction of one metric ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases.

There are two markets for carbon offsets. In the larger, compliance market, companies, governments, or other entities buy carbon offsets in order to comply with caps on the total amount of carbon dioxide they are allowed to emit. In 2006, about $5.5 billion of carbon offsets were purchased in the compliance market, representing about 1.6 billion metric tons of CO₂e reductions.

In the much smaller, voluntary market, individuals, companies, or governments purchase carbon offsets to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electricity use, and other sources. For example, an individual might purchase carbon offsets to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions caused by personal air travel. Many companies (see list) offer carbon offsets as an up-sell during the sales process so that customers can mitigate the emissions related with their product or service purchase (such as offsetting emissions related to a vacation flight, car rental, hotel stay, consumer good, etc.). In 2008, about $705 million of carbon offsets were purchased in the voluntary market, representing about 123.4 million metric tons of CO₂e reductions.

Offsets are typically achieved through financial support of projects that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the short- or long-term. The most common project type is renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, or hydroelectric dams. Others include energy efficiency projects, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, and forestry projects. Some of the most popular carbon offset projects from a corporate perspective are energy efficiency and wind turbine projects.

Carbon offsetting has gained some appeal and momentum mainly among consumers in western countries who have become aware and concerned about the potentially negative environmental effects of energy-intensive lifestyles and economies. The Kyoto Protocol has sanctioned offsets as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits which can be traded on a marketplace. The protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which validates and measures projects to ensure they produce authentic benefits and are genuinely "additional" activities that would not otherwise have been undertaken. Organizations that are unable to meet their emissions quota can offset their emissions by buying CDM-approved Certified Emissions Reductions.

Offsets may be cheaper or more convenient alternatives to reducing one's own fossil-fuel consumption. However, some critics object to carbon offsets, and question the benefits of certain types of offsets.

Offsets are viewed as an important policy tool to maintain stable economies. One of the hidden dangers of climate change policy is unequal prices of carbon in the economy, which can cause economic collateral damage if production flows to regions or industries that have a lower price of carbon - unless carbon can be purchased from that area, which offsets effectively permit, equalizing the price.

Carbon offset markets

Global market

In 2009, 8.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent changed hands worldwide, up 68% from 2008, according to the study by carbon-market research firm Point Carbon, of Washington and Oslo. But at EUR94 billion, or about $135 billion, the market's value was nearly unchanged compared with 2008, with world carbon prices averaging EUR11.40 a ton, down about 40% from the previous year, according to the study. The World Bank's "State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2010" put the overall value of the market at $144 billion, but found that a significant part of this figure resulted from manipulation of a VAT loophole.

Controversies

Indulgence controversy

Some activists disagree with the principle of carbon offsets, likening them to papal indulgences, a way for the guilty to pay for absolution rather than changing their behavior. George Monbiot, an English environmentalist and writer, says that carbon offsets are an excuse for business as usual with regards to pollution. Proponents hold that the indulgence analogy is flawed because they claim carbon offsets actually reduce carbon emissions, changing the business as usual, and therefore address the root cause of climate change. Proponents of offsets claim that third-party certified carbon offsets are leading to increased investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, methane biodigesters and reforestation and avoided deforestation projects, and claim that these alleged effects are the intended goal of carbon offsets. On October 16, 2009 Responsible Travel, once a strong voice in favour of carbon offsetting, announced that it would stop offering carbon offsetting to its clients, stating that "too often offsets are being used by the tourism industry in developed countries to justify growth plans on the basis that money will be donated to projects in developing countries. Global reduction targets will not be met this way".

On 4 February 2010, travel networking site Vida Loca Travel announced that they would donate 5% of profits to International Medical Corps, as they feel that international aid can be more effective at cutting global warming in the long term than carbon offsetting, citing the work of economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Perverse incentives

Because offsets provide a revenue stream for the reduction of some types of emissions, they can in some cases provide incentives to emit more, so that emitting entities can later get credit for reducing emissions from an artificially high baseline. This is especially the case for offsets with a high profit margin. For example, one Chinese company generated $500 million in carbon offsets by installing a $5 million incinerator to burn the HFCsHFC-23. produced by the manufacture of refrigerants. The huge profits provided incentive to create new factories or expand existing factories solely for the purpose of increasing production of HFCs and then destroying the resultant pollutants to generate offsets. Not only is this outcome environmentally undesirable, it undermines other offset projects by causing offset prices to collapse.The practice had become so common that offset credits are now no longer awarded for new plants to destroy

Wildwood Conservation Area

View Larger Map

View Online

September 10, 2010 Greetings and welcome to the Science Progress fortnightly newsletter. In the past two weeks, Editor-In-Chief Jonathan D. Moreno and regular contributor Jeanne F. Loring have continued to cover the implications of the August 23 federal embryonic stem cell research funding ban, noting the impacts that it will have on thousands of research jobs and on America's long-term competitiveness in regenerative medicine. As well, Paul B. Thompson brings the debate over genetically engineered food into the 21st century with his review of this year's National Research Council report findings. Finally, we dissected the Department of Energy's recent announcement of the winner of the Energy Efficient Building Systems Regional Innovation Cluster (E-RIC) grant competition, a first-of-its-kind interagency collaboration designed to catalyze the bottom-up formation of regional public-private partnerships for technology innovation. Thrown Back to the 90's By Jeanne F. Loring, Ph.D. The misguided human embryonic stem cell research ruling by a U.S. court would discontinue amazing gains made over the past 12 years in regenerative medicine. U.S. Stem Cell Ruling Invites Asian Competition By Jonathan D. Moreno A ruling barring NIH funds from use in embryonic stem cell research will hurt American research efforts and send cutting-edge biotechnology jobs to Asia. Informing the Genetically Engineered Crop Debate By Paul B. Thompson Why what you think you know about agricultural biotechnology may be wrong. A Win for Regional Innovation By Sean Pool On August 24th the Department of Energy Announced that a consortium of 90 organizations anchored at Penn State University will receive $129 million of to support energy efficiency innovation. Enjoy, Sean Pool

Images of the Giant Hog Weed

GIANT HOG WEED

Giant Hogweed, Heracleum mantegazzianum

Human Health Issues

Giant hogweed can be a serious health hazard for humans. Its watery, clear sap contains photosensitizing compounds (furanocoumarins), which, when in contact with human skin and in combination with UV radiation, can cause burning. Content varies depending on plant part, but contact should be avoided at all times. The reaction of the skin depends on individual sensitivity. After 24hrs, reddening and swelling of the skin can be noticed, which is followed by an inflammatory reaction after 3 days. Depending on individual sensitivity, effects can last for months and skin can remain sensitive to UV light for years. Research has also shown that furanocoumarins in general may be carcinogenic and teratogenic.

Often Mistaken For

Giant hogweed has been mistaken for other species, especially others in the carrot family. These species include; Angelica, Wild carrot (daucus carota), Goutweed (aegopodium podagraria), poison hemlock (conium maculatum), water-parsnip (sium suave), spotted water-hemlock (cicuta maculata) and angelica (angelica atropurpurea). Once again, its "giant" size is the easiest distinguishing feature, as it towers above these other species.

Description

Plants forming rosettes to 1m high the first year; in the second year, either sending up a flowering stem, or remaining vegetative and producing a very large rosette of huge leaves, these including their petioles, up to 2m high, and flowering in the third year.

Distribution Map

If you know of a sighting and wish to report it, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources is maping Giant Hogweed populations.
Go to: Click here

Giant hogweed invades Russia Click here

Giant Hogweed Video Click here

Media Items

Figure 1: Second year giant hogweed plant with rosette leaves up to 125 cm high plus central stem with 2 leaves emerging through the top of the rosette. Central stem produces large umbel of flowers. Top


Figure 2: Young giant hogweed plant. Top


Figure 3: Top


Figure 4: Cross-section of giant hogweed stem. Top


Figure 5: Stem of giant hogweed exuding clear, watery sap. Top


Figure 6: Top


Figure 7: Leaves of giant hogweed. Top


Figure 8: Underside of giant hogweed leaf. Top


Figure 9: Giant hogweed on field edge. Top


Figure 10: Giant hogweed in field. Top


Figure 11: Umbel of giant hogweed flowers. Top


Figure 12: Top


Figure 12: The Biology of Invasive Alien Plants in Canada
Top


Figure 13: Education poster for the general public
Top


Figure 14: Educational poster for outdoor workers.
Top

Invasive poisonous plant poses serious health risks to people in Vermont and New York. This Giant Hogweed or Heracleum mantegazzianum plant video shows images from Victory Vermont with narration describing why this poisonous plant poses serious health risks to people. Imagine having to cover your skin for 3 years or longer after touching a plant while hiking. That is phytophotodermatitis! Now imagine going blind from touching this poisonous plants sap to your eye's!

UPDATE: We have since observed that Giant Hogweed is growing prolificly along RTE 16 just before the Shadow Lake Road in Glover Vermont. Also Wild Parsnip a much smaller cousin is growing like crazy along RTE 91 as you approach the Newport exits.

For other uses, see Angelica (disambiguation).

Angelica
Wild Angelica (Angelica sylvestris)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Apiales
Family:	Apiaceae
Tribe:	Selineae
Genus:	Angelica L.
Species
About 50 species; see text

Wild Angelica (Angelica sylvestris) from Thomé, Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885

Maintenance Report By Alan Day

Maintenance Director’s Report for July and August.

1. Trail clearing.

This report concentrates on maintenance in the north end as Dave Potten has coordinated work in the south end.

A maintenance ‘blitz’ was held in mid July and a number of volunteers and Trail Captains worked hard to ensure that the wilder parts of the trail from Valleyview Rd. to the northern terminus at St. Mary’s remained clear. It was noticeable that our earlier efforts in mid June had paid dividends as July trail clearing was relatively easy - even in this area which has always been difficult to maintain.

Another blitz is currently in operation to do a final clearing of this same northern part of the trail by about Sept 8.

Many thanks to the many people who turned out to help at various times this summer.

2. Construction.

In conjunction with Rob and Michael Kuenzlen, plans to build one more bridge in the Ebenezer to Hwy 7 section are being made with a view to completion this month. Also Tom Friesen will be organizing construction of some steps on some steeper parts of the trail, using the recently purchased metal step brackets.

3. Trail Captains reports

The two seasonal reports by Trail Captains on the state of the trail in their section are an important part of our insurance requirements and also a key part of a maintenance strategy. The second set of these reports is now coming in, with a deadline of Sept 15.

4. Hogweed Report.

Virtually all potential Giant Hogweed plants that have been reported so far turned out to be less noxious relatives such as Cow Parsley or Angelica. A few likely plants have been reported located well off trail between Rannoch Ford and the Golf course - so at present we do not seem to have much of a problem.

If do you see any possible cases please try to take a photo of leaves and flowers and send to me, noting its location as precisely as possible.

5. Possible reorganization of some Trail Captain’s sections

It has been suggested that the 2 extreme sections at the south and north ends are too big for Trail Captains and/or Trail Maintenance Leaders and need some reorganization – particularly as they are among the most difficult sections to manage. I will be discussing this with interested parties and bringing back a recommendation if necessary – comments and suggestions from Board members are welcome.

Alan Day,

Trail Maintenance Director.

Hullet Marsh by Margaret Duncan

Here are some beautiful photos by Margaret Duncan from Hullet Marsh's Trekkers Walk.