Location: AERL Theatre (main floor), 2202 Main Mall
(BBQ and Cash Bar afterwards from 4:30pm to 8pm)
This event showcases the research done by our current RES Master and PhD students.
[Photo Credit: Jonathan Taggart]
Speakers:
Simon Harding, PhD Candidate – no video available
Alicia Speratti, PhD Candidate
Leo Glaser, MSc Student
Chloe Sher, MA Student – no video available
Mike Lathuillière, PhD Candidate
Jackie Yip, PhD Candidate – no video available
Available Videos:
Leo Glaser
Talk Title: Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Energy Evaluation of University Buildings
Mike Lathuillière
Talk Title: Water Footprints: Freshwater volumes and impact assessment
Alicia Speratti
Talk Title: Biochar feedstock and pyrolysis temperature effects on maize cultivation on a Brazilian Arenosol
[Photo Credit: Living Oceans Society / Wikimedia Commons]
A project that was co-negotiated by John Driscoll, an RES PhD student in Dr. Kai Chan’s lab, has won the 2016 Vancouver Aquarium Murray A. Newman Award for significant achievement in aquatic conservation. This award is shared by the team of environmentalists and fishing industry representatives that negotiated the British Columbia bottom trawl habitat management agreement. This agreement, which went into place in 2012, resulted in a suite of regulations that have reduced the fishery’s annual bycatch of coral and sponge by two orders of magnitude, reduced the fishery’s allowable spatial footprint by over 20% from historic levels, prevented the fishery from expanding into previously un-trawled areas, and permanently protected over 80% of particularly sensitive deep-sea habitats from the effects of trawling.
Connections and Challenges: Lessons learned five years after the Great Japanese Tsunami of 2011
Abstract:
Five years after the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 created a massive tsunami, debris continues to arrive on North American and Hawaiian shorelines carrying living Japanese species. In response to this unprecedented event the ADRIFT project was launched, funded by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan through the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES). The primary goal of this project is to assess and forecast the effects of debris generated by this tsunami, especially those related to non-indigenous species, on ecosystem structure and function of coastal communities. The project focuses on three main areas of research: (1) modeling movement of marine debris in the North Pacific, (2) surveillance and monitoring of tsunami-generated marine debris landfall, and (3) assessing risk from potentially invasive species to coastal ecosystems. A suite of general circulation models was used to simulate movement of marine debris arising from the tsunami. Surveillance and monitoring research has characterized the temporal and spatial variability in debris landfall. Aerial photographic surveys were conducted for the exposed coastlines of British Columbia, Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands to search for large debris items and identify debris accumulation hotspots. The invasive species team continues to characterize the invasion potential of non-indigenous associated with tsunami debris. Over 400 items attributed to the tsunami have been intercepted, and from these over 300 species of algae, invertebrates and fish have been identified; some of these species are well-known global invaders. This presentation will focus on how the lessons learned in the aftermath of this unprecedented natural event challenge traditional ecological theory and connect communities on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Bio:
Dr. Cathryn Clarke Murray is Visiting Scientist with the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) and Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Murray is a marine ecologist broadly interested in the interaction between human and natural systems. She holds a PhD in biological oceanography from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s of Science degree from James Cook University in Australia. Her postdoctoral work with WWF-Canada focused on the cumulative effect of human activities and she has conducted interdisciplinary research on a broad range of topics, from the ecology of invasive species, to ecological risk assessment and ecosystem-based management. She is based in Victoria, British Columbia.
Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Ecology, The University of Queensland
Professor of Conservation Decisions, Imperial College London 2013-18
Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow 2014-18
Director of The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions http://ceed.edu.au/ 2011-18
Director of The National Environmental Science Program hub for Threatened Species: 2015-20
Aside from his day job, Hugh has a variety of broader public roles advising policy makers and managers by sitting on 11 committees and boards outside the University including: The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (founding member), Founding Editor of Conservation Letters (an international scientific journal), Queensland Rhodes Scholars selection committee and several Environmental NGO scientific advisory committees. He and Dr Barry Traill wrote “The Brigalow Declaration”, used by Premier Beattie to stop land clearing in Queensland thereby stopping 10% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and saving an area the size of Portugal from conversion into farmland.
The Possingham lab developed the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Marxan www.ecology.uq.edu.au/marxan.htm was used to underpin the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef and is currently used in over 160 countries by over 5000 users – from the UK and USA to Madagascar and Brazil – to build the world’s marine and terrestrial landscape plans. Most recently Marxan was used to develop the biggest marine reserve system in the world – Australia’s federal marine reserve system. Hugh coauthored two scientific consensus statements that supported Australia’s new marine reserve system, that is a quarter the size of Europe. Many governments and ENGOs use his lab’s work for the allocation of funding to threatened species recovery and solving other conservation conundrums. He is an advocate of wise decision-making and an informal advisor to several governments.
Possingham has coauthored 499 refereed publications covered by the Web of Science (27 in Science, Nature or PNAS) and has more than 15,500 Web of Science citations (h=66). A Google Scholar profile can be found at http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=9-veEp8AAAAJ&hl=en. He currently directs two research centres, $20 and $60 million, and he has supervised (or is supervising) 56 PhD students and 43 postdoctoral fellows.
He has one known psychological disorder, a compulsive desire to watch birds.
Abstract: Perhaps the most familiar notion of “consensus” involves some sort of counting – e.g., vote tallying – resulting in unanimity or a majority. But consensus is a heterogeneous category. And some important forms, as practiced, are quite different from this. I will consider a form of consensus that goes by various names, referring to its various aspects: “decision by interpretation,” “apparent consensus,” “nemine contradicente,” “joint agreement.” It is not about counting, not about unanimity or a majority. What especially concerns me here is the manner in which this form of consensus represents the epistemic state-of-play of a community of experts, without revealing differences among the community members with regard to the issues under consideration. Such apparent consensus can therefore mask considerable disagreement. I will discuss contexts and senses in which such decision procedures are, and are not, advantageous for groups of experts. I will illustrate differences between such consensus practices, and the more commonly analyzed unanimity and majority practices, with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Bio:
John Beatty teaches history and philosophy of science, and social and political philosophy, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. John’s research focuses on the theoretical foundations, methodology, and socio-political dimensions of genetics and evolutionary biology. His current research projects concern more specifically: 1) the distinction between “history” and “science,” and the respects in which evolutionary biology is as much like the former as it is like the latter; 2) changing views of contingency and necessity in the evolutionary biology; 3) relationships between biology and “the state,” from the Manhattan Project to the Human Genome Project; and 4) issues concerning the nature of scientific “authority.”
