UVic prof creates new digital guide to plants, animals on B.C.’s wild coast
VICTORIA — An innovative app created by a University of Victoria professor is giving people around the world the ability to experience the vast, diverse beauty of British Columbia’s coast.
Ecologist Brian Starzomski and his team have catalogued more than 700 species in the Great Bear Rainforest and logged them in a new digital field guide called “Central Coast Biodiversity.”
Their work can be accessed through a smartphone or tablet app, or on a computer, to help people identify unfamiliar plants and animals.
The idea came from a class Starzomski taught at the remote Hakai Institute on Calvert Island, off the West Coast, where he requires students to get out into the wilderness and identify a number of different species.