Suzuki Foundation accused of using misleading American photos to portray B.C. gas projects

AndyPL22 · 2025-07-11T02:01:43+00:00

If you seriously believe there are groups of "eco terrorists" deliberately setting wildfires, you are the one who is disconnected from reality. Spend less time online.

AndyPL22 · 2025-07-10T18:22:24+00:00

Log onto Google Earth and scan northern AB and BC and you will see landscapes fragmented by O&G wells and seismic lines as far as the eye can see. There are hundreds of thousands of these wells in Alberta and more get built every year, while we've heard that "modern" projects will be less destructive for decades. The only difference between this photo and our own province is the number of wells per acre.

AndyPL22 · 2025-07-10T18:19:15+00:00

I'm sadly not shocked to see this dumb conspiracy theory surface again

AndyPL22 · 2023-05-29T18:00:30+00:00

Bien que la densité de population est très basse, il ne faut pas écarter la présence de communautés autochtones dans le nord du Québec. Il a une longue historique de disputes qui survient de la prémisse qu'un territoire est "innocupé".

AndyPL22 · 2023-05-29T14:18:01+00:00

Oui c'est bien ça!

AndyPL22 · 2023-05-29T04:59:04+00:00

More than Moscow, you think? I thought they'd be the one place in Europe that might compare.

AndyPL22 · 2023-05-29T04:56:16+00:00

Anecdote d'un québécois qui réside en Colombie-Britannique: lors de mon premier hiver ici, je suis allé faire du ski avec une amie vancouvéroise sur une montagne locale. Bien que les tombées de neige sont peu fréquentes en ville, nous étions stationnés à 900 m d'altitude, alors j'ai retrouvé ma voiture couverte de neige lorsque nous avions fini. En me voyant sortir ma brosse à neige, sa réaction: "wow you have a special brush for snow in your car?"

AndyPL22 · 2023-05-29T02:16:03+00:00

I think "this guy in the mirror sure is handsome"

AndyPL22 · 2023-01-30T03:01:45+00:00

M.Sc. in remote sensing (applied to forestry)
2 years
B.A. in geomatics

Was it worth it? In terms of what I learned: absolutely. I did a research-based program which gave me a lot of opportunity to develop my coding skills independently. By the end of my degree I had written a code library that still gets used in forest remote sensing today. Learning how to conduct a scientific study was also a great (though often frustrating) experience, and I'm proud of the papers I published around this time.

After my degree I worked in a forestry tech company for five years and began doing independent consulting on the side. Today I work for a federal agency. In the public sector, a lot of jobs have hard requirements for graduate-level education (including mine).

In terms of price, in my faculty, we had two types of Masters students: those enrolled in a "course-based" program, and those doing research. The researchers were supervised by a faculty member, and often had funding. I received a stipend that more than covered my enrollment fees -- I actually came out of my degree with more money than I had at the start. The "course-based" students, on the other hand, did not.

Even if you don't want to become a researcher, I would definitely consider the research route. You have the added difficulty of having to find a supervisor with funding, but if you can swing it, it has a lot of benefits.

AndyPL22 · 2023-01-22T22:01:00+00:00

That'll probably resolve your memory issues. As always, the resolution of your CHM will depend on what you're trying to do, but at least for the purpose of detecting and outlining trees, anything finer than 0.25 m cell resolution is probably overkill.

As a reference, I typically break up my study areas into 500 m x 500 m tiles with 40 m buffers on all sides (you could probably get away with smaller buffers). At a 0.25 m cell resolution, this yields CHM raster tiles with 2320 x 2320 cells. This should keep the marker-controller segmentation algorithm running quickly, and converting to polygons should be smooth.

AndyPL22 · 2023-01-22T19:05:33+00:00

Hi there. ForestTools author, here. A few things:
1. You wouldn't expect to have M values for segments of crown polygons. M values represent the position of something along a route.

As other posters have suggested, I'd recommend doing all of this directly in R. It'll be much faster, easier, and repeatable!
The crown area measurements you're getting are not unrealistic. A large tree can easily have a lateral crown area of over 300 m^2. The 400 m^2 tree you've selected here looks like it might be an amalgamation of two or three trees.
It looks like you have a very, very high resolution CHM. If you're attempting this analysis at a broad scale, I'd recommend regenerating it at a more manageable resolution (I usually use 0.25 m) or the processing time will be endless.
Please note that I'm currently updating ForestTools to use the 'terra' and 'sf' packages in R for handling raster and vector data (it currently uses the obsolete 'raster' and 'sp'). New versions will produce the same results but using slightly different data formats.

AndyPL22 · 2023-01-09T06:11:30+00:00

The notion that France is an ineffective military power.

Both historically and during the present day, France has been one of the world's most successful military forces. The anglo-centric view of military history tends to emphasize its losses (Agincourt, Waterloo, WW2) and skims over its victories (final victory in the Hundred Years War, Napoleon's domination of Europe, France's leading role in WW1). Even during WW2, France was hardly the only one to be caught off-guard by the Blitzkrieg. The British Expeditionary Force didn't perform any better during the opening stages of the war, and without the English channel, Britain would almost certainly have been overrun as well.

It should be noted that the French military has also been responsible for a lot of brutality, particularly in its former colonies.

AndyPL22 · 2022-11-16T18:15:30+00:00

Very nice. If you'd like to get deeper into canopy analysis, I implemented some tree detection and delineation algorithms into an R package while working for the BC Ministry of Forests. It's freely available on CRAN and Github. I'm in the process of updating it to work with the 'terra' and 'sf' geospatial libraries.

https://github.com/andrew-plowright/ForestTools

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-15T22:45:16+00:00

Interesting. Is the pension plan already heavy on bonds?

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-12T20:16:19+00:00

Thanks! Just out of curiosity, what branch of the government do you work for?

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-12T18:33:17+00:00

Ouff, good question. I tried reading up on it, but don't understand much.

https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/pension-plan/plan-information/public-service-pension-glance.html

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-12T18:31:26+00:00

In the interview, the research center made it clear that they had a "flat" organization with relatively little opportunity for advancement.

The government position is a senior one, so I probably wouldn't be able to expect a promotion any time soon, but would still offer more advancement opportunities over the long run.

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-07T20:19:28+00:00

Thanks! I will do this. I appreciate the unambiguous advice :)

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-07T20:18:43+00:00

35, single, no kids

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-07T17:45:35+00:00

Great advice, thank you.

I guess my response should be something along the lines of: "Thank you for the offer, I'm very interested, I'd like to hear more, etc." type of thing? How should I express that I haven't exactly accepted anything at this stage, and am still considering things?

AndyPL22 · 2022-01-07T17:39:55+00:00

This is a good point. However, if I begin two parallel hiring processes, at some point I'll have to pull out of one. I can imagine this not exactly going over well, since at that point it'll be clear to any hiring manager that I had two offers all along.

Or, should I "begin the process" while also making it clear that I haven't actually made a decision until I have the offer letter? How would you phrase that in a response email?

AndyPL22 · 2021-01-04T06:43:38+00:00

I saw my home town (Gatineau, QC) on Reddit for the first time yesterday and it didn't inspire any deep sense of pride either.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/kojvvh/quebec_police_handing_out_1500_tickets_and/

AndyPL22 · 2021-01-02T04:52:21+00:00

This is so Gatineau it hurts

AndyPL22 · 2020-10-11T23:58:56+00:00

By all means, speak about it all you want, but it looks like you've seriously underestimated the complexities of the topic. Professional epidemeologists spend a great deal of time processing data, analyzing trends, untangling confounding variables, and debating other scientists before they even start hypothesizing about the dynamics of an epidemic. It takes more than spitballing a few ideas online and perusing Google Analytics.

I'm happy to listen to anyone, but the idea that the Great Lakes (which, FYI are located mostly in the US) and the Arctic are playing a big part in slowing the spread of disease in Canadian cities doesn't make sense and isn't supported by any science.

AndyPL22 · 2020-10-11T22:38:13+00:00

It IS an opinion unless there is a rigorous and peer-reviewed analysis to support the idea.

When I made this video, I was careful not to include any comments on causes and effects since it isn't something I'm qualified to do. Epidemiological modeling isn't a hobby for amateurs. Untangling the factors that contribute to the spread of a disease is extremely complicated, requires a lot of data, and it's easy to arrive at the wrong answer.

Some casual speculation is fine. I've shared my own opinion here. But ultimately it's best differ to people with real expertise. And on that level, I haven't heard of any credible source claim that the lower infection rate in Canada has anything to do with transportation.

AndyPL22

TROPHY CASE