Alberta

People who search for human remains in Alberta say a new study identifying predominant scavengers in the region will help them conduct their searches more efficiently.In August 2021 and August 2022, researchers placed pig carcasses at four locations — one near Edmonton, another near Calgary and two in more rural areas.The 200-pound pigs acted as analogs for human remains so researchers put dresses, shorts and shirts on them."It probably looks ludicrous, but we are trying our best to recreate a human environment and if we…

On the vast grasslands of Alberta, a group of sharp-tailed grouse gather for the most important event of the year: a song and dance competition.While most male birds compete against each other to win a mate, the grouse take a different approach. They perform a synchronized dance routine as a team, and the more males, the more impressive their performance.These sharp-tailed grouse put on a remarkable show. With their heads down and wings outstretched, they stomp and rattle their tail feathers. Flashes of yellow from the…

Richard Ozero operates a forklift in his warehouse, loading drums full of honey into a semi-trailer. His son uses a dolly to transport and organize the drums deeper into the trailer.This wasn't Ozero's initial entrepreneurship plan, but he's happy with how things are going since he jumped head-first into beekeeping.Alberta is Canada's honey powerhouse; Ozero and his family are among hundreds of beekeepers helping the province's honey industry buzz."Looking back, I don't know how we did it," he said. "I don't know if I…

A helicopter hovering high above the ground canvasses a portion of snow-covered terrain near Fox Lake, east of High Level, Alta.On the ground, about 20 provincial firefighters, fully dressed in bunker gear, scout the area to map out wildfire hotspots and dig up ground fires."Our firefighters are always monitoring fires in the winter, so we're taking flights and checking out some of our carryover fires," said Victoria Ostendorf, a wildfire information officer for the High Level Forest area."But it's not as common to see as…

A group of researchers are giving hands-on experience to members of Indigenous communities to teach them how to monitor remediation efforts of oil and gas companies on their traditional lands. NAIT's Centre for Boreal Research based out of Peace River teaches communities about forest ecology, seed identification, and peatland restoration — all as a way to reclaim their lands."The initial activities … were to train the community members to be what we call the guardians, to understand how land reclamation works, to be able…

West-central Alberta communities are assessing damage and making repairs as flood waters recede.In the town of Edson, 100 kilometres west of Edmonton, a state of local emergency ended Monday after a tumultuous two weeks of fire and flood.Flooding prompted the emergency declaration on June 19, just days after town residents had been given the green light to go home after six days under wildfire evacuation orders.Mayor Kevin Zahara said Monday that the community got more than 135 millimetres of rain, and about 60 homes and…

Seventy-five million years ago in southern Alberta, a river flooded, burying the eggs of bird-like dinosaurs nesting on the nearby plain. Now, tiny pieces of those fossil egg shells offer new evidence about how dinosaurs lived, bred and evolved into birds.A new study shows emu-sized, meat-eating troodons were as warm-blooded as birds, with body temperatures of more than 40 C. But unlike modern birds such as chickens that can produce one egg a day, troodons used a very slow egg-forming process similar to the one used by…

A view of the Peace River in northern Alberta, Canada. Credit: Shutterstock A new study by Stanford University researchers has found that one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Alberta, Canada, was likely caused by oil and gas activity. On November 30, 2022, a 5.6-magnitude earthquake shook the remote Peace River…

A northern Alberta brewery has used a chatbot to create a beer that it hopes will become a talker. Amber Waves of Grain, released in February by Grain Bin Brewing Company, is an amber ale in which everything — the name, the price, the packaging and the recipe — was decided by OpenAI's Chat GPT, an artificial intelligence tool trained to mimic human responses."We decided to just be as hands-off as possible, to see what the limitations were and what the actual final product would be if we relied solely on artificial…

A new $24 million matchmaking program is aiming to help rebuild caribou populations in Jasper National Park that are too small to recover on their own.  The federal government announced Tuesday that its previously announced proposal to carry out a first-of-its-kind caribou conservation breeding program is going ahead. "We've determined through that work over the last few years that using conservation breeding is the only tool available to Parks Canada and Jasper National Park to be able to recover these small herds," said…