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A year after deadly B.C. heat dome, experts say events may alter ecology forever | Globalnews.ca

A year after deadly B.C. heat dome, experts say events may alter ecology forever  | Globalnews.ca

A year after the heat dome event that killed billions of plants and animals in British Columbia, scientists say ecosystems are recovering, but could be transformed forever if such events become more frequent.

Cold-water marine species could be replaced by warm-water organisms, triggering cascading effects through the environment, said Christopher Harley, a zoology professor at the University of British Columbia.

“If we had another heat wave this summer, it would be a problem,” he said. “An ecosystem might be able to handle a big heat wave once every few decades — there’s enough time for recovery — but if it starts hitting every four or five years, the species that we’re used to just can no longer persist.”


Click to play video: 'Lessons learned from last year’s heat dome'







Lessons learned from last year’s heat dome


Lessons learned from last year’s heat dome

Dozens of temperature records were set during the heat dome. The high-pressure system settled over Western Canada, acting as a lid to trap a layer of hot air that got progressively hotter for about a week. Three successive Canadian records were set in the town of Lytton, where the temperature topped out at 49.6 C on June 30, the day before a fire destroyed most of the village.

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The heat caused more than 600 human deaths, the BC Coroners Service reported. It also led to mass mortalities of marine life, reduced crop yields and contributed to wildfires, which later caused devastating landslides last fall.

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Diane Srivastava, director of the Canadian Institute for Ecology and Evolution, organized a group of scientists now working to understand the heat dome’s impact on species and ecosystems. She said some were “immediate and obvious” but several years of data is required to “get a full picture of the longer-term effects.”

Harley, a member of the group, said the heat wave caught researchers off guard and they are now “scrambling to understand” what it will mean for the oceanic ecosystem.

“I’m a bit embarrassed to say we don’t know (the ecological consequences) because it hadn’t occurred to us to ask what would happen if it got hot enough to kill billions of marine animals,” he said. “That heat dome was so far outside of what anyone expected.”


Click to play video: 'Rebuilding Lytton for a much hotter, more dangerous future'







Rebuilding Lytton for a much hotter, more dangerous future


Rebuilding Lytton for a much hotter, more dangerous future

Scientists initially estimated more than a billion marine animals died along the Pacific coast. Harley, who has studied shorelines on the West Coast since 1995, said this was an underestimation.

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“Easily many billions of animals died,” he said. “It was a perfect storm of a few different things. It was obviously much, much hotter than usual and those high temperatures coincided with very low tides.”

Species with mobility had a higher survival rate than those that anchor to rocks in shallow waters, he explained.

“Mussels aren’t back yet and some of the common seaweeds are not, but baby barnacles are having the time of their lives. They’re all over the place and the first step in recovery is (when) they come in,” he said. “The foundation has now been laid.”

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Adam Ford, an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology at the University of British Columbia, said the large mammals he studies were far less impacted by the heat than oceanic life.

“We’ve got a couple of years of data under our belt and there wasn’t a bump in mortality or anything during that time.”

He said this is because large mammals are homeothermic, meaning they can regulate their body temperatures, and were able to move to cooler areas to avoid direct heat.

Karen Hodges, a professor of conservation ecology at the University of British Columbia, said most mobile animals and those that burrow into the soil likely fared better during the wildfires that followed the heat dome than those unable to flee quickly. She said it’s difficult to estimate total deaths because it would require “many assumptions about animal densities” before the fires.

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How fast an area’s ecosystem recovers depends on environmental aspects like soil moisture, but hinges on fire management practices and climate change response, Hodges said.

“The answer to what comes back becomes a question of what humans do to these landscapes in the next decade, two decades if you want to be generous, because we could either set up the conditions for low levels of frequent, small fires or we could set up conditions that enable repeats of these massive fires,” she said. “It’s a pivotal time.”

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Ford echoed the call for better wildfire practices to mitigate the impacts of intense heat.

“We already know that climate change and poor management practices, like fire suppression, for the last 50 to 70 years has really degraded the health of our forests. So you put those two things together, we’ve got a recipe for catastrophic failures that trickled through all sorts of areas of society, including biodiversity,” he said.

“We need to figure out how we put fire back on the landscape in an amount and intensity that restores habitat for wildlife and people.”

Wildland fires are a natural part of the forest ecosystem and important for maintaining the health and diversity of the forest, Natural Resources Canada says on its website.

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“Prescribed fires offer a valuable resource management tool for enhancing ecological conditions and eliminating excessive fuel buildup,” the website says.

For decades, scientists in B.C. have been calling for the use of low-severity fires to “maintain” forest health by creating fire breaks. Hodges said fire suppression efforts made to protect communities eliminated many of those natural breaks, allowing fires to spread more easily.

She said the provincial report following B.C.’s historic 2003 wildfires, which forced the evacuation of over 45,000 people from the province’s interior, was a turning point.

“That report is full of advice about letting some fires burn, about FireSmart communities and about prescribed fire and all sorts of things that the province basically didn’t do, but that advice has been in government hands since at least that report,” she said.

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Hodges said large fires can also compound climate change-related weather events, like the catastrophic floods that took place in B.C. last fall. She said fires that kill thousands of trees affect soil composition and can make it hydrophobic, meaning it repels water. Then, when heavy rains occur, water isn’t absorbed into the soil, causing landslides.

“Things like this are way more common after these big, hot lethal fires than after the small run-of-the-mill fires we’ve had in our history,” she said.

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The Ministry of Forests said in a statement that it uses prescribed burning as “one of several fuel management tools and techniques to help reduce the intensity of naturally occurring wildfires while returning an integral process to the ecosystem.”

Rachel White, the lead author of a report on the widespread ecological impacts of the 2021 heat wave, currently under peer review, said the lack of synthesized data has been a major barrier for scientists.

“We’re going to have more frequent and hotter heat waves, and this is going to have an impact on all of the ecology. In order to monitor that, we need data,” she said.

“We need that data in order to actually understand what the impacts are and, once we know how systems are responding now, that gives us more information to say how they’ll respond in the future if the climate continues to warm through human actions.”

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Harley, the zoology professor, and his team is working to better understand what makes an ecosystem more or less sensitive to heat waves.

“There may be small changes that we can make so ecosystems are more resistant to something like a big heat wave or a big drought,” he said.


Click to play video: 'With better home security, Metro Vancouver thieves turn to new targets outside homes'







With better home security, Metro Vancouver thieves turn to new targets outside homes


With better home security, Metro Vancouver thieves turn to new targets outside homes

Srivastava said the Institute for Ecology and Evolution has been advocating for a provincial biodiversity monitoring network.

“Events like this sort of point out the need to have such a monitoring network for biodiversity already in place, which would allow us to have a long-term monitoring of many populations,” she said. “Instead, what we’re having to do is pull together data from many different sources to try to see the immediate effects and then the long-term effects.”

She said the development of a network is “a recent and ongoing subject of conversation” with provincial and federal governments.

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B.C.’s Environment Ministry confirmed it is working to synthesize ecology research and data on climate change as part of its new Climate Preparedness and Adaptation Strategy.

“Understanding how climatic disruption will affect ecosystems is essential to responding to climate change,” it said in a statement. “The province is supporting the establishment of an Ecosystem Forecast Centre within the Ministry of Forests to build expertise and resources to translate technical climate change projections into forecasts of ecosystem change in B.C.”

© 2022 The Canadian Press

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‘The Thing’ Theatrical Release from Fathom Events Was a Disaster But They’re Making It Right for Wednesday Night

‘The Thing’ Theatrical Release from Fathom Events Was a Disaster But They’re Making It Right for Wednesday Night

Spooky narratives tend to be scarier when experienced alone, and that’s why I’ve always preferred single-player horror gaming. That being said, there’s no denying that multiplayer has taken over videogames over this past decade, captivating players with the unpredictable thrills of online cat-and-mouse matches. Now that horror juggernauts like the Friday the 13th franchise and even Evil Dead have gotten in on the action, lesser-known properties like Full Moon Features’ massive catalogue of B-movies have also been getting the multiplayer treatment with projects like October Games’ upcoming Puppet Master: The Game.

Of course, there’s still an untapped well of memorable scary movies that could be translated into entertaining interactive experiences, and that’s why we’ve come up with this list of horror films that deserve their own multiplayer videogame adaptations.

While this list is based on personal opinion, there are a couple of ground rules. First of all, no movies that have already been turned into licensed multiplayer videogames (though other kinds of games are okay). We’ll also be focusing solely on direct adaptations, so no licensed DLC for titles like Dead by Daylight. Lastly, these entries have been selected according to the potential entertainment factor of a licensed videogame, not necessarily the overall quality of the movies themselves.

As usual, don’t forget to comment below if you think we missed any entertaining horror flicks that would make for entertaining multiplayer games.

Now, onto the list…


6. A Quiet Place (2018)

horror multiplayer quiet place

While you have to accept quite a few logical inconsistencies in order to enjoy John Krasinski’s insanely popular A Quiet Place movies (like how survivors never have to deal with noise-producing bodily functions and the flimsy reasoning for how the aliens differentiate human sounds from natural ones), even the harshest critic has to admit that the films’ sound-based paranoia would make for a great videogame mechanic.

An online title where players are tasked with outsmarting the so-called “Death Angels” during hazard-filled levels sounds like a nail-bitingly intense experience with lots of replay value. You could even have some players take on the role of the blind invaders, searching for prey via some form of sonar-vision.

Another film that could be adapted into a game with similar mechanics would be Tremors, though the underground nature of the iconic Graboids means that they would probably be less fun to play than A Quiet Place’s Death Angels. On that note, a single-player experience based on A Quiet Place is actually in the works from Saber Interactive, last we heard!


5. Poltergeist (1982)

Best Horror Films

Masked killers and monstrous creatures can be scary, but what about inanimate objects coming to life and trying to eliminate players as they attempt to rid a seemingly ordinary house of paranormal activity? This thrilling setup is why I think Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist could be the perfect basis for an online multiplayer horror experience where parapsychologists team up to battle a hostile environment taken over by unseen spirits.

Think Luigi’s Mansion meets Ghost Hunters as an online Poltergeist game could allow players to explore haunted houses and perform exorcisms while a phantom puppet master pulls invisible strings and tries to eliminate the investigators. Hell, you could even have a “this house is clean” message pop up onscreen after a successful match-up against the spirits!


4. Child’s Play (1988)

Don Mancini’s iconic killer doll has only ever showed up in a single videogame, starring in a disappointing endless runner titled Chucky: Slash & Dash that was released exclusively for iOS back in 2013. However, with the recent success of SyFy’s Chucky series, I think this is the perfect time to bring Charles Lee Ray back for some pint-sized serial-killing mayhem.

A multiplayer take on Child’s Play could see the villainous Good Guy doll try to complete a voodoo ritual while cooperating players attempt to thwart his bloody plans and destroy the plastic murderer once and for all. The franchise’s recent additions to the mythology could even justify the inclusion of multiple killer Good Guys in the game, not to mention fan favorites like Tiffany and Glen/Glenda!


3. Death Proof (2007)

horror multiplayer death proof

Not only is Death Proof one of Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated features (it’s like a car-based slasher and slasher sequel all rolled into one), but it could also be turned into a kick-ass videogame if put in the hands of a competent developer.

All they would have to do is borrow the hide-and-seek mechanics of titles like Dead by Daylight and combine them with the vehicular madness of classics like Twisted Metal or even Burnout, forcing players to survive thrilling car chases as a murderous stuntman attempts to bring them down in a more horror-centric take on the battle-racing genre.

Of course, there are other films that developers could look to for inspiration when crafting a game like this, such as Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive or even Christine.


2. Dracula (1931)

Last Voyage of Demeter

There have been over two hundred cinematic adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula over the years, with even more set to release in the near future. However, in the world of videogames, the character has only ever shined as the antagonist of the Castlevania series, with few legitimate attempts at bringing Stoker’s gothic yarn to gaming. I think that’s a real shame when you consider how easily this story could be gamified.

In fact, the more a hypothetical Dracula title adhered to Stoker’s original vision, the more fun the resulting game would be. An asymmetrical battle between a close-knit group of protagonists (featuring scholars, vampire hunters and badass doctors) working together to bring down an ancient demon with a fearsome array of supernatural powers could be ridiculously fun without losing track of the human element that made the original story so compelling in the first place.


1. Invisible Man (1933) / Invisible Man (2020)

H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man isn’t just one of the first literary examples of a psychopathic supervillain, he’s also an incredibly versatile character that could easily be inserted into a multiplayer horror game. Think about it: a group of ill-fated players are tasked with tracking down the invisible killer in a closed environment, looking for the faintest traces of an unseen presence as one murderous player tries to remain undetected and manipulates the level in order to defeat his pursuers.

An interactive Invisible Man game would be like virtual hide-and-seek on steroids, with players attempting to outsmart each other in a paranoid experience rivalling even the best matches of Dead by Daylight or Friday the 13th. You could even bring in elements from Leigh Whannell’s more recent adaptation, with the invisibility powers coming from a rechargable hi-tech suit rather than a mysterious serum, giving players more of a fighting chance against the invisible menace.