An Archaeological Perspective and Anti-colonial Approach to Forest History in Laxyuubm Ts’msyen and Beyond
Time: 12:30pm to 1:20pm
Location: Beaty Museum Theatre (2212 Main Mall)
Email communications@ires.ubc.ca for video.
Talk summary:
Land-use scientists increasingly recognize that ecological and anthropogenic forces have long interacted in complex ways, forming many of the landscapes we observe today. In the Pacific Northwest, historical Indigenous land-use and forest management has resulted in forest gardens: ecosystems dominated by edible fruit, nut, and berry producing trees and shrubs, managed by Indigenous peoples in the past and which continue to grow today. This presentation will provide an overview of forest garden research in collaboration with Ts’msyen, Sts’ailes, and Nuchatlaht Nations, focusing on archaeological and historical-ecological methods and data. Anti-colonial perspectives are explored as a means of centralizing Indigenous sovereignty and practice (action) while challenging ongoing colonial/extractive dynamics in scientific research.
Dr. Chelsey Armstrong, Settler scholar and assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University Director of the Historical and Ecological Research Lab
Bio:
Dr. Armstrong is a historical ecologist and archaeologist specializing in ancient human land-use in the Pacific Northwest. She is a settler scholar and assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University, and director of the Historical and Ecological Research Lab.
How to create record-breaking wildfire seasons in BC: A reflection on recent megafires and their drivers
Location: Beaty Museum Allan Yap Theatre (Basement, 2212 Main Mall). Please speak with the Admin desk on the main floor before going down to the Theatre.
British Columbia is smashing wildfire records. The years 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023 were the four most severe and costly wildfire seasons of the last century. What drives these large, intense, and uncontrollable megafires? Social media is swirling with conspiracy theories about ecoterrorists, arsonists, and lasers from space. In reality, wildfire is driven by climate, weather, and fuels that vary among ecosystems in mountainous landscapes and through time. Global warming, superimposed on a century of colonization land-use change, fire exclusion, and industrial forest management have made many forests highly susceptible to intense fires that exceed modern technologies for control and spread to large sizes with extreme impacts. Revolutionizing forest and fire management will improve ecosystem resilience to climate change, but we will not stop future fires from burning. To successfully adapt, our society must learn to coexist with wildfire
Dr. Lori Daniels, Professor, UBC Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences
Bio:
Dr. Lori Daniels is a Professor of Forest Ecology in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, where she directs the Tree-Ring Lab at UBC. Lori investigates the impacts of natural and human disturbances and climate change on forests. With her research team, she has on-going projects on wildfires, forest dynamics, and social-ecological resilience to climate change across British Columbia. Her enduring partnerships with local, provincial, and national governments, environmental organizations, forest management companies, community forests, and First Nations ensure her scientific advances are translated to active conservation, restoration and management. She contributed to the Blueprint for Wildland Fire Science in Canada and served as a member of the Canadian Wildfire Strategy Implementation Team and the NSERC-Canada Wildfire Research Network. Since 2015, she has given more than 200 media interviews on wildfires and their impacts on forests and communities. She is among the 150 Canadian Scientists recognized in 2017 for research shaping new frontiers and making our world a better place (#150Scientists). She was acknowledged as a Women Leader in international fire science research in 2018, received the 2019 Canadian Institute of Forestry Scientific Achievement Award, the 2022 James J. Parsons Distinguished Career in Biogeography Award from the American Association of Geographers and the 2023 Distinguished Researcher Award from the Association of Fire Ecologists.
As the majority of Canada obtains its drinking water from forested watersheds, forest management to better manage the effects of land use changes related to industries such as logging and urban development are of high public interest. To understand impacts on aquatic ecosystems from land use change it is essential to understand how carbon is cycled, transported, and stored throughout the ecosystem. Aquatic ecosystem metabolism (AEM), a key component of carbon cycling, can be evaluated by determining gross primary productivity (GPP) and respiration (R) within the water column of streams, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. AEM controls energy and material flow through aquatic ecosystems therefore linking environmental change and food webs to provide a useful framework for examining ecosystem function and productivity. The objective of this research is to investigate the role of AEM as a control on carbon transport, turnover, and fate in forested ecosystems under varying land use and streamflow conditions. I used sensors to measure dissolved oxygen to determine AEM on a continuous basis for a single stream. The study was conducted in the University of British Columbia (UBC) Malcolm Knapp Research Forest (MKRF) located approximately 50 km east of Vancouver, BC containing forested and harvested catchments.
Trisa Ngo, IRES MSc Student
Bio:
Trisa is a MSc student in IRES supervised by Dr. Mark Johnson. She is part of the UBC Ecohydrology Lab where her research focuses on the impacts of land-use changes to water quality and aquatic metabolism in the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. Her broader research interests include water security, watershed science, and resource management. Currently, Trisa lives and works as an environmental scientist in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories where she was born and raised; as a result, she is also interested in northern research topics that contribute to improving and increasing the state of knowledge in the North.
Talk summary:
As of 2020, Saskatchewan leads the country in highest per capita GHG emissions. It was also the only province to have immediately and unremittingly rejected the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change which hinged on a national plan for pricing carbon. Despite widespread advocation for carbon pricing from economists and evidence of success in other jurisdictions, there is strong opposition to the federal carbon tax in Saskatchewan among the general public and the governing Saskatchewan Party. One means for Saskatchewan politicians to share their views on the matter is via Twitter (recently renamed X) – a platform they may use to speak directly to voters. In this study I explore how Saskatchewan politicians, at both the federal and provincial levels, have used Twitter as a tool to discuss and frame the federal carbon tax. This presentation highlights the tweet content analysis that was performed and the results of this study that find, due to the silence of alleged supporters, there was almost no defense of the carbon tax from Saskatchewan’s own elected officials on Twitter.
Grace Schaan, IRES MA Student
Bio:
Grace Schaan is a MA student in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and is supervised by Dr. Kathryn Harrison. Grace is interested in researching policy for climate change and explores in her master’s thesis how politicians frame the federal carbon tax. She is also researching the impacts of BC’s provincial legislation on climate action at universities as a Sustainability Scholar with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the UBC Sustainability Hub.
Grace completed a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies at the University of Regina in 2020. Prior to joining IRES, she worked for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in the National Agroclimate Information Service. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, camping, and listening to live music.
The Climate Emergency and the Future of Global Food Trade Governance
Time: 12:30pm to 1:20pm
Location: Beaty Museum Allan Yap Theatre (Basement, 2212 Main Mall). Please check in at the Admissions Desk first before going to the Theatre.
No food or drinks allowed in the Theatre.
Click here to register for Zoom link. Zoom will be terminated if we encounter tech problems 5 to 10 mins into the seminar. This seminar will not be recorded.
Talk summary:
Food systems are a key driver of climate change and climate change poses significant threats to the stability of world food production. International food trade can enable markets to respond to food supply shocks; however, existing global food trade rules may constrain the policy space of states to enhance food system resilience to climate-induced shocks. While World Trade Organization (WTO) rules are designed to maximize economic efficiency and discourage overproduction, they may also limit states’ capacity to insure against global production shocks through public food stockholding.
Dr.Matias E. Margulis,Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs & Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Bio:
Matias E. Margulis is Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His research interests span international trade, development, and food security. His most recent book is Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security (Stanford University Press, 2023).
For system change to confront the Climate-and-Ecological Crisis.
In response to a culture that suppresses transformative efforts and visions, we need to #UnleashValues for a sustainable future. Join a webinar hosted by CoSphere to learn how easy it can be to amplify pro-sustainability values!
The ocean plays a key role in regulating the climate by absorbing atmospheric CO2. In light of the growing awareness of limitations of terrestrial CO2 removal (tCDR), the ocean is becoming the new ‘blue’ frontier for carbon drawdown. To ensure that the ‘hope’ presented by marine CO2 removal (mCDR) does not promote unrealistic ‘hype’, there is a need for assessments that go beyond techno-economic feasibility. This talk; (1) gives an overview of one such holistic assessment being carried out within the German research mission CDRmare; (2) outlines an approach to assessment of mCDR’s political (in)feasibility, in which political framework conditions are treated as independent variables shaping the feasibility of mCDR becoming part of Germany’s carbon management strategy and; (3) invites discussion of results from the actor mapping being undertaken to explore the political (in)feasibility frontiers of mCDR in Germany.
Dr. Miranda Böttcher, Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Bio:
Dr. Miranda Böttcher is a Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), and an affiliated member of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the knowledge politics of environmental assessment and governance. She is currently working on the German-government project CDRmare, developing a transdisciplinary assessment framework for marine carbon removal, with a focus on identifying political (in)feasibility frontiers. Additionally, Miranda is a member of the United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) Working Group 41: Ocean Interventions for Climate Mitigation.
