The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

UNIVERSITY of The Bahamas North has embarked on a solarisation project for its Environmental and Marine Science Field Research Station in East Grand Bahama.

Dr Ian Strachan, president of UB North, expressed his excitement about the project, funded through a $100,000 grant from the Bahamas Protected Area Fund Hurricane Dorian Grant.

“Today is a wonderful day for UB North in that we have received this grant from the Bahamas Protected Areas Fund,” he said at a press conference at the UB campus in East Grand Bahama. “We are so excited about it and see it as something that sends a signal to where we want to go with this field station and the work we want to do.”

The first installation of solar panels will provide energy to the science lab, restrooms, and sleeping quarters on the second level of the building. UB will host researchers and students from around the globe interested in environmental, atmospheric, and marine science as well as sustainable development, forestry, hydrology, geology, and climatology.

According to Dr Strachan, the field station should be online by early Spring 2022.

However, he noted that UB’s field station will be a work in progress over the next two years.

“We are focusing on this on a project by project, grant by grant approach,” Dr Strachan explained. “The physical work would be ongoing over the next year or two as we write grants, and we make up our mind as to how best to rebuild.

“My guess is that we would be online by early Spring of 2022, to be able to have classes, use the lab, and have people sleep over, and have researchers coming in and out by April next year.”

Dr Strachan indicated that the move is the beginning of something bigger for the university, in terms of finding innovative solutions to the country’s national problems: climate change, finding more sustainable forms of development, economic diversification, and being able to manage and be more resilient in the case of category five storms.

“I am very pleased that this is happening. I am thankful to the team, particularly Dr Andrew Moxey and Ms Keturah Babb. They both did a lot of work to make sure we got it to this point. I am also happy for the vote of confidence shown in the university, and there is more to come. It is the first of more announcements to come,” he said.

Karen Patton, of the Bahamas Protected Area Fund, said that they are pleased to partner with UB in such a transformative project.

This latest grant, she said, is the fourth presented to UB by the Bahamas Protected Area Fund.

“We are very excited at this transformative vision of Dr Strachan, Dr Moxey, and the fine team here at UB in putting together a centre of excellence that we know would be in the best interest of Grand Bahama and the people of the Bahamas at large,” she said.

“Dorian was an extraordinary storm and hopefully one we will never experience again. We want to say to Grand Bahama and that we have every confidence in Dr Strachan, and that we have every confidence in the university because this is the third $100,000 grant that we have given to the UB directly and indirectly and the fourth grant that we have actually put here on the ground in Grand Bahama.”

Dr Andrew Moxey commended BPAF for its level of confidence in UB by awarding them the grant. He said that they plan to seek out more grants to further develop the field station.

“We have already secured an additional grant from generous donors to construct a vegetation seedling nursery, and work has already begun,” he said.

Dr Moxey said that there are several other research projects that UB North plans to execute at the facility.

“Our water table has been the object of many hurricanes over the past, but Dorian pretty much rendered the entire aquifer system in the east dysfunctional and unusable. And so we have several research projects that are being led by our colleagues and collaborators from around the world, including California Technical University, Florida Tech University, and the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

All these institutions are partnering and collaborating with us to understand the profile of the recovery phase of what Dorian left. Those are the three additional projects that will require the use of our lab facilities and nursery facilities to revegetate some of the areas. Those are some of the activities that will be emanating out of the field station,” he said.