Supporting Indigenous youth to live with continued resilience, meaning and hope

Indigenous Life Promotion and strengths-based approaches to mental wellness and suicide prevention are important strategies that promote sovereignty, holistic wellness, and healing at the individual, family, and community levels. As part of the Patient and Community Engagement Research (PaCER) program, our team facilitated three focus groups with Indigenous young people in Alberta to better understand how they wish to be supported to live life with continued resilience, meaning and hope. Our team conducted a thematic analysis on the focus group transcripts and derived five key themes from their contents: 1. Accessible, meaningful, and ongoing supports; 2. Indigenous-centered, culturally meaningful and safe supports; 3. Fostering meaningful connections and relationships; 4. Surviving/ ‘Existing’; and 5. Thriving; living with purpose and meaning beyond surviving. Based on these themes, six recommendations for better supporting the wellbeing of Indigenous youth were developed: 1. Indigenous-centred resources; 2. Accountability; 3. Person-centred support; 4. Enhancing empowerment in children & youth; 5. Holistic health liaison/navigators; 6. Increased funding. Attending to the voices of Indigenous youth in planning and enhancing supports will continue to bolster their inherent resilience and contribute to the process of reconciliation in Alberta and Canada

Hydrological and geochemical responses of fire in a shallow cave system

The influence of wildfire on surface soil and hydrology has been widely investigated, while its impact on the karst vadose zone is still poorly understood. A moderate to severe experimental fire was conducted on a plot (10 m × 10 m) above the shallow Wildman\u27s Cave at Wombeyan Caves, New South Wales, Australia in May 2016. Continuous sampling of water stable isotopes, inorganic geochemistry and drip rates were conducted from Dec 2014 to May 2017. After the fire, drip discharge patterns were significantly altered, which is interpreted as the result of increased preferential flows and decreased diffuse flows in the soil. Post-fire drip water δ18O decreased by 6.3‰ in the first month relative to the average pre-fire isotopic composition. Post-fire monitoring showed an increase in drip water δ18O in the following six months. Bedrock related solutes (calcium, magnesium, strontium) decreased rapidly after the fire due to reduced limestone dissolution time and potentially reduced soil CO2. Soil- and ash-derived solutes (boron, lead, potassium, sodium, silicon, iodine and iron) all decreased after the fire due to volatilisation at high temperatures, except for SO42−. This is the first study to understand the hydrological impact from severe fires conducted on a karst system. It provides new insights on the cave recharge process, with a potential explanation for the decreased d18O in speleothem-based fire study, and also utilise the decreased bedrock solutes to assess the wildfire impacts both in short and long time scales