TALKING TO TREES: A DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION EFFECTS OF ATHABASCA BITUMEN MINING DOWNWIND FROM THE INDUSTRY
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Bitumen mining in Alberta is considered one of the largest economic vehicles in Canada, but the assessment of this industry’s environmental impacts is incomplete. The region downwind of this pollution source is occupied by an Indigenous population concerned for the health and viability of their territory. This thesis presents dendrochronology results of principal component and regression analysis documenting white spruce (Picea glauca) growth suppression associated with bitumen mining activity. The growth suppression is most pronounced close to the disturbance and in the most recent rings. With a desire to share these results with the Indigenous peoples whose traditional territory overlaps this study’s transect, I engaged in relationship building and knowledge sharing activities beyond the scope of my scientific analysis. This thesis presents both dendrochronology results documenting tree growth suppression associated with bitumen mining activity and reflections on the relational ethics of conducting research-relevant activity on Indigenous lands in Canada.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".