Operation and Maintenance Support to Enhance Research and Highly Qualified Personnel Training at the Queen's University Biological Station

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The Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS) has been at the forefront of university-based training and research in ecology, evolution, conservation, and environmental studies for over 7 decades. QUBS-based work has produced > 300 undergraduate and graduate theses, and > 1000 peer-reviewed papers, many in leading science journals. Its two campuses provide lab space, field & lab equipment, classrooms, library, research collections, with accommodation for 130 and a staffed kitchen. Research at QUBS spans many fields, from satellite-based remote sensing, through studies of impacts of climate change or toxins on the environment, to work on invasive and at risk species. Users come from Queen’s University, from many other Canadian universities, NGOs and governmental agencies, and from institutions from the USA, Europe, China, and Latin America. QUBS Elbow Lake Education Centre provides science outreach and public education, with emphasis on work done at the Station. User fees, Queen’s contributions, and donations support maintenance and basic logistics, but QUBS lacks funding for any dedicated scientific staff. We thus request NSERC funding for a PhD-level Science Coordinator and a Collections and Data Manager for 2 years to address this critical deficit. The Science Coordinator will organize workshops, facilitate collaborations and digital communication, run public seminar series, and help supervise student interns and HQP. The Collections & Data Manager will help digitize all 144,000 specimens in our plant collection, catalogue animal specimens and tissues, digitize data from > 50 years of previous research, monitor our NSERC-funded climate station network, augment our GIS data, and ensure that all data are publically available on our data portal. Our 8 co-applicants come from 4 different universities, with collaborators from > 25 organizations worldwide. Co-applicants have exemplary records of HQP-driven research, and collectively have published > 300 peer-reviewed papers in the last 5 years alone. Research and HQP training programs enabled by this funding will address key issues in ecology and environmental science. Increased usership will assist with longer-term financial sustainability of these positions. Programs, databases, and scientific infrastructure created will enable training of > 175 HQP over a 5-year period, and will have enduring impacts on research and training at QUBS and for the larger science community via open access data archives.