Sean Smukler
Associate Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Bio
Sean Smukler is appointed in LFS, not at IRES, and instead is a Faculty Associate of our unit. He may supervise students in our RES graduate program.
Evgeny Pakhomov
Evgeny Pakhomov
Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Bio
Evgeny Pakhomov is not appointed at IRES and instead is a Faculty Associate of our unit. Please see appointments in left-hand column.
Conor Reynolds
Conor Reynolds
Adjunct Professor
Bio
Conor Reynolds holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies, and a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering, both from UBC. He is a professional engineer with over two decades of experience related to the science, policy, and management of air contaminants and greenhouse gas emissions. Conor is the Director of the Air Quality & Climate Action Services team at Metro Vancouver, which is the regional government that delivers services, policy and political leadership on behalf of 23 local authorities. Air Quality & Climate Action Services is responsible for the development and implementation of the Clean Air Plan, which identifies and prioritizes actions to reduce air contaminant and greenhouse gas emissions in our region this decade, as well as Climate 2050, the 30-year regional climate action strategy for the Metro Vancouver region. He is interested in interdisciplinary policy research that can drive implementation of meaningful climate action in society, in particular related to widespread adoption of smart, clean energy technologies for reducing air contaminant emissions.
Featured Publications
Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=FLBQhg4AAAAJ&hl=en
Kathryn Harrison
Kathryn Harrison
Professor, Department of Political Science
Bio
Kathryn Harrison is appointed in Poli Sci, not at IRES, and instead is a Faculty Associate of our unit. She may supervise students in our graduate program.
Kathryn Harrison is Professor of Political Science. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Western Ontario, Master’s degrees in Chemical Engineering and Political Science from MIT, and a PhD in Political Science from UBC.
Learn more at:
https://politics.ubc.ca/persons/kathryn-harrison/
Brian Gouge
Brian Gouge
Adjunct Professor
Bio
Brian Gouge is a Research Scientist at Aquatic Informatics and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Victoria and a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia. His interests are at the intersection of information technology, the environment, human health, and decision making. Brian’s current projects focus on environmental informatics and decision making, and involve information modeling, analytics, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and software engineering. Previous projects have included modeling of the environmental and human health impacts of air pollution from transit buses and vehicle scheduling optimization aimed at reducing these adverse impacts.
Colin Levings
Bio
Colin Levings is a retired DFO Research Scientist affiliated with the Pacific Science Enterprise Centre in West Vancouver, British Columbia. He has a BSc and MSc in Zoology and Fisheries from UBC and a PhD in Biological Oceanography from Dalhousie University. He has co-supervised graduate students at UBC working on aquatic ecosystem and fisheries problems in BC ranging from invasive species to marine protected areas to estuarine habitat restoration and collaborated with overseas colleagues on estuarine studies in Norway, Japan, and Korea. Colin is working on reviews, reporting past data, mentoring, and currently serves on advisory boards for DFO and the Nicholas Sonntag Marine Science Education Centre in Gibsons, BC. He is also interested in historical ecology. He has a paper in press on how technology facilitated an overfishing crisis for Pacific Ocean perch and another on iconic marine ecologist Ed Ricketts’s work in BC. His book on “Ecology of Salmonids in Estuaries Around the World: Adaptations, Habitats and Conservation” was published in 2016 (UBC Press). See https://colinlevings.ca/ for contact link, complete listing of publications (1967-2020), achievements and other biographical information.
Projects
Courses
Featured Publications
Navin Ramankutty
Navin Ramankutty
Director, IRES
Professor, IRES
Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
Canada Research Chair (T1, Sustainable Global Food Systems)
Contact Details
AERL Room 425
2202 Main Mall
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Canada
Lab website:
http://www.ramankuttylab.com/
Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=POHYXREAAAAJ&hl=en
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NRamankutty
SPPGA profile:
https://sppga.ubc.ca/profile/navin-ramankutty/
Bio
Navin Ramankutty is Professor and Canada Research Chair (CRC) Tier 1 in Data Science for Sustainable Global Food Systems at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and IRES. His research program aims to understand how humans use and modify the Earth’s land surface for agriculture and its implications for the global environment. Using global Earth observations and numerical ecosystem models, his research aims to find solutions to the problem of feeding humanity with minimal global environmental footprint.
He was the awardee of the Wihuri International Prize in 2020. He contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report and to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an editor of the journal Global Food Security and Global Ecology and Biogeography, and is an Associate Editor of Environmental Research Letters. He is a Leopold Leadership Fellow.
Courses
RMES 500T Global Food Security and Sustainability
Featured Publications
- Sidhu, B. S., Z. Mehrabi, N. Ramankutty, and M. Kandlikar, How can machine learning help in understanding the impact of climate change on crop yields?, Environ. Res. Lett., 18(2), 024008, 10.1088/1748-9326/acb164, 2023.
- Ricciardi, V., Z. Mehrabi, H. Wittman, D. James, and N. Ramankutty, Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms, Nature Sustainability, 10.1038/s41893-021-00699-2, 2021.
- Ramankutty, N., Z. Mehrabi, K. Waha, C. Kremen, M. Herrero, and L. Rieseberg, Trends in Global Agricultural Land Use: Implications for Environmental Health and Food Security, Annual Review of Plant Biology, 69, 2018.
- Seufert, V., N. Ramankutty, and J. A. Foley, Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture, Nature, 485(7397), 229-232, 2012.
- Foley, J. A., N. Ramankutty, et al., Solutions for a Cultivated Planet, Nature, 478(7369), 337-342, 2011.
Scott McKenzie
Scott McKenzie
PhD Candidate
Contact Details
scott.obrien.mckenzie@gmail.com
Research Interests
Human right to water, Science-policy interface, Water governance, Water law
Bio
Scott is a PhD student in Resource Management and Environmental Studies working under the supervision of Dr. Leila Harris. Before UBC, Scott completed a Bachelors of Arts in Environmental Studies, Philosophy, and American Studies at the University of Kansas and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Iowa. Scott’s research and writing focuses how contending notions of scale and regulation affect water policy (within the water-energy-food nexus). His work considers the relationship between the natural environment, human development, and law. He has also worked as a development agent for the United States Peace Corps in Morocco, in the Cairo office of the Near East Foundation, as a private practice lawyer in New Orleans, and at the International Water Resources Association in Montpellier France.
At UBC Scott is a member of the EDGES research collaborative and the Program on Water Governance. Scott’s research will be involved with Experience of Shifting Water Governance: Comparative Study of Water Access, Narrative and Citizenship in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. This collaborative comparative research project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and will focus on differing relationship between citizens in under served areas in Ghana and South Africa, their provision of water, and how they access and interact with the state to mediate this relationship.
Featured Publications
McKenzie, S. (forthcoming) “Yakya Axa v. Paraguay: Upholding the Human Right to Water and a Greener Future” in 35 Years of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Theory and Practice, Present and Future, University of Gent Human Rights Centre .
McKenzie, S. (2013) “Somali Pirates and the Case for Systemic State Intervention,” in Controversies in Globalization: Contending Approaches to International Relations, ed. Peter M. Haas, John A. Hird (Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press, 2013), p. 219.
Cathryn Clarke Murray
Cathryn Clarke Murray
Adjunct Professor
Bio
Dr. Cathryn Murray is a Research Scientist with the Ecosystem Stressors Program in Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She formerly served as Visiting Scientist with the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) on project ADRIFT (Assessing Debris-Related Impact From Tsunami). She is also 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. She has conducted interdisciplinary research on a broad range of topics, from the ecology of invasive species, to ecological risk assessment, cumulative effects assessment, and ecosystem-based management.
Laura Morillas
Bio
My main scientific interest is to study water resources in water-limited ecosystems and how climate change can affect water dynamics and water availability in those areas. Because evapotranspiration is the main component of the water balance under water limited conditions, during my PhD my main research objective was to develop regional evapotranspiration models specifically designed for semiarid conditions to achieve an accurate methodology to quantify evapotranspiration at regional scale. Working with physical models forced me to understand those factors controlling the evapotranspiration, and how those factors will be be affected by climate change. To validate evapotranspiration models I learnt and used the Eddy Covariance technique, the most extended methodology to measure CO2, evapotranspiration and energy fluxes between the land surface and the atmosphere. After my PhD I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico (US) where I studied the consequences regarding to water resources of widespread piñon mortality events affecting large areas of piñon-juniper woodlands in the Southwestern US. Our results showed that those regional scale tree mortality events can increase the temperature and aridity of those already water stressed areas, with large potential impacts for water dynamics and availability. At UBC I have joined an international project called FuturAgua, focused on the characterization of water resources in a drought-affected area of Costa Rica, Nicoya peninsula, and the development of resilience strategies to drought in a dynamic social-ecological system. Particularly my participation in the project will be focused in improving our understanding of water dynamics in the area and developing a hydrological model to predict the response of local water resources to predicted climatic scenarios. I am very interested in the practical and social aspects of this project, in which research will be applied from the characterization of current water resources to the development of management strategies to improve resilience of this agricultural-based social-ecological system in order to respond in a time matter to predicted future water scarcity.
Projects
Courses