Our Nature talk on Tuesday, July 4th, featured Rachel Kendall and her work surrounding the forested wetlands of Nova Scotia. Rachel loves exploring and gaining new understandings of how plants, soil, and wildlife interact at the ecosystem scale. She is especially interested in wetland ecosystems in Nova Scotia, and conservation measures to protect them and the species that thrive in them. Rachel grew up in rural Nova Scotia and is interested in applying her knowledge to projects that support the sustainability of communities and industries in Nova Scotia. Rachel pursued a Bachelor of Science at Saint Mary’s University where she had the opportunity to work on a large collaborative forested wetlands project. She then pursued a Master of Science at McGill University where she worked on a research project assessing the biogeochemical cycling in harvested peatlands in Québec and Alberta. Rachel is currently working as a Research Associate with NSCC Applied Research. She gained professional recognition with her paper on the role of forested wetlands as carbon sinks in southwest Nova Scotia. This research showed that forested wetlands store more carbon in the soil than adjacent upland forests! This is important information to guide decision-making around wetlands and this was the first carbon budget study of forested wetlands in Nova Scotia. In this talk, Rachel will give a background on wetlands in Nova Scotia, explain how she did this research and the results, and highlight studies conducted by other researchers as part of the large collaborative forested wetlands research in Atlantic Canada. Check out Rachel's socials here: Instagram: @wildwetlands Twitter: @wildwetlandsNS LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelken...