ArcticNet Day 2

Today was our second day at ArticNet. Today we started the day off eating at the same breakfast place, then we headed over to the Halifax Conference Centre. The day started a little differently with a topical session instead of the Plenary. The first topical session that we attended was called One Health in the North. It was about different parasites and viruses, their migration patterns, and how they affect their hosts. One of the interesting presentations was about toxoplasma gondii in foxes and lynxes. The data that was presented at this topical session was also really detailed and very relevant to the climate in ways that were not expected.

Next was the plenary and we ended up wandering around the booths and talking to people about their research instead of going. We talked to a lot of groups that sponsored other people's research. One of the most interesting groups that we talked to was a group that had just launched satellites into the atmosphere and used them to monitor ocean, ice, land environments, and the atmosphere in and around Canada.

During lunch, we sat with a group of people who were representatives of different Northerners. They raised a lot of interesting points about the conference and the representation of the Northerners. After that, we decided to go see the waterfront and then went to the Halifax Citadel. The walk was long but it was a nice view of the city and the water.

Then we went to a topical session about Wildlife in the Arctic. A lot of the sessions were about the distribution and migratory patterns of certain animals. One of the interesting presentations at this topical session was about the Winter Overcompensation of Rodents. The presentation was very well put together and they had data that was significant and answered their research question. The last topical session was about the Glacier Change and Ice Ocean Interaction. This session was interesting but it had very little research that was related to ISAMR’s study.

Today we had a lot more people come and look at our poster than the previous day. We had a few grad students come who had some interesting ideas for our research, and people who we could contact for our future work. There was one student who we met from Puerto Rico who seemed to know a lot about who we should work with when the group goes down in January. We also had some judges stop by who were judging all of the grad-student posters and didn’t realize that we are a high school group.

After leaving, we walked through the city some more and went to a regional style restaurant.