Alejandra Echeverri Ochoa is a Killam Doctoral Scholarship recipient for 2017-2018.
The Killam Doctoral Scholarships are provided annually from the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund for Advanced Studies. These are the most prestigious graduate awards available at UBC, and are awarded to the top doctoral candidates in the annual Tri-Agency / Affiliated Fellowships competition.
Click here for more information on Alejandra.
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract: Ocean acidification (OA) is predicted to have a significant impact on the future of coral reefs, mainly through the reduced formation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). However, the dissolution of stored CaCO3 has largely been overlooked in the OA community. CaCO3 sediments represent the largest reservoir of carbonate minerals in coral reefs and result from the accumulation and storage of CaCO3 material over thousands of years. Benthic chamber incubations in permeable CaCO3 sediments show that aragonite saturation in the overlying water is a strong predictor of CaCO3 sediment dissolution and most reefs show a similar response to increasing average pCO2 (OA). However, every reef shows a different net sediment dissolution starting condition and the effect of end of century OA conditions on net sediment dissolution is different for every reef. Empirical relationships between average aragonite saturation and net ecosystem calcification, coral calcification and sediment dissolution from reefs around the globe are used to quantify future changes in the CaCO3 accretion of coral reefs. Quantifying the global dissolution kinetics of permeable CaCO3 sediments is clearly just as important as estimating calcification rates when predicting how OA will impact coral reef ecosystems.
This seminar will not be filmed.
Bio: Professor Bradley Eyre is a biogeochemist and the foundation Director of the Centre for Coastal Biogeochemistry at Southern Cross University, Australia. His publications include topics such as whole ecosystem carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus budgets, net ecosystem metabolism estimates, benthic and pelagic production and respiration, dissolved organic carbon fluxes, carbon stable isotopes (fluxes and assimilation), carbon burial and air-sea GHG flux estimates, benthic denitrification, benthic habitats and seascapes, historical and ecosystem comparisons, ocean acidification, hypoxia, eutrophication, submarine groundwater discharge, permeable sands and carbonate sediment dissolution. Professor Eyre has 157 articles in Scopus listed journals (H-index = 44, Total citations >5000, Google Scholar; H-index = 35, Total citations>3500, Scopus) and has attracted over >$20 million in funding. He has mentored 14 early- and mid-career researchers and supervised 32 PhD students.
Professor Eyre is a Visiting Professor in IRES from December 2017 to February 2018.
Photo Credit: The Coral Reefs from flickr / Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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The FuturAgua project is an international, multidisciplinary, action-oriented research program involving three teams of researchers,funded by granting agencies in three countries, all focused on applied research to help build resilience to drought in the dry tropical northwest part of Costa Rica. The project was conceptualized, developed, and carried out in close collaboration with civil society groups and regional agencies that work to address important water questions in the region. This presentation will address the context, design, process, and key findings of the research conducted by UBC researchers,with input from the team members at Carnegie Mellon University. National University of Costa Rica professor Andrea Suarez will provide regional perspectives on the project. The researchers will highlight some of the factors that led to the main successes of the project, and also reflect on some of the challenges of conducting a research project of this kind.
After the seminar, there will be a poster session to showcase the project’s main research findings. Lunch will be served (RSVP required)
This seminar will not be filmed.
Click here for poster.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory Building
2202 Main Mall, UBC Point Grey Campus
Vancouver
Research Seminar: 12:30-1:30pm, AERL Theatre (room 120)
Poster Session + Lunch: 1:30-2:30pm, AERL Foyer
RSVP required for lunch: futuraguaproject@gmail.com
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Tim McDaniels
Professor, School of Community and Regional Planning
Douw Steyn
Professor Emeritus, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (EOAS)
Mark Johnson
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and EOAS
Kai Chan
Professor, IRES
INTERNATIONAL GUEST
Andrea Suarez
Director of the Centre for Mesoamerica for Sustainable Development of the Dry Tropics (CEMEDE), National University of Costa Rica
RESEARCHERS
Silja Hund
PhD Student EOAS
Laura Morillas
Postdoctoral Research Fellow IRES and EOAS
Paige Olmsted
Postdoctoral Fellow IRES, Visiting Fellow Copenhagen Business School
Alejandra Echeverri
PhD Student IRES
Daniel Karp
Former Killam Postdoctoral Fellow IRES, Assistant Professor, Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology UC Davis
Click here for poster.
Photo credit: Fran Kimmelman-Finn from flickr/Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract: Environmental policies are crafted by governments, but influenced by stakeholders and lobbyists. In this seminar we will talk to a panel of people outside of academia, in both governmental and government relations roles, to learn about what it’s like to build environmental policies from inside and outside the government.
Speaker Bios:
Alaya Boisvert joined the David Suzuki Foundation in 2013 to campaign for the right to a healthy environment. As the manager of government relations for the Blue Dot project, she worked towards federal recognition of the right to clean air and water, safe food and a stable climate. Alaya now works as the public engagement manager with the aim of empowering people.
David Boyd is the newest faculty member at IRES. He is an environmental lawyer and an expert on human rights and the environment. He has co-chaired Vancouver’s Greenest City initiative, worked in the Privy Council Office, and consulted with the Federal government on a variety law reform efforts.
Ann Rowan is a manager for Collaboration Initiatives at Metro Vancouver where she is involved in the Ecological Health Plan, the Regional Food System Strategy and other initiatives related to waste prevention, regional prosperity and regional climate action. Ann came to Metro Vancouver from the David Suzuki Foundation.
Adriane Carr is a Vancouver City Councilor with the Green Party. She co-founded B.C.’s green party in 1983, and served as its leader from 2000-2006. She served as Elizabeth May’s deputy in the federal Green Party from 2006-2014. She has an academic background in urban geography and taught for 12 years at Langara College.
This seminar will not be filmed.
Photo credit: marcostetter from flickr/ Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract: Increasingly the path of the academic includes one or more post-doctoral fellowships. Four of our IRES postdocs will join us in frank conversation about their experiences. They will cover everything from the mundane to the theoretical about what it is like to be a young researcher beyond grad school. Please bring questions if you have them.
This seminar will not be filmed.
Bios:
Dawn Hoogeveen is a human geographer by training and completed her PhD here at UBC. She holds an MA from Simon Fraser University and a BA (hons) from Carleton. Her work concerns resource regulations, mining law and policy pertaining to environment, human rights, and culture. Her postdoc work is funded by a Mitacs Elevate grant under the direction of Terre Satterfield and in collaboration with the Firelight Group.
Ed Gregr has spent his adult life pursuing a mix of academic and employment opportunities. He completed his PhD with Kai Chan in 2016 and is currently an Adjunct Professor at IRES working a post-doc job part-time. He enjoys making maps, especially of analyses that have not previously been mapped, and hopes to continue doing so in both academic and consulting settings.
Laura Morillas studies water resources in water-limited ecosystems and how climate change affects them. She received her PhD from The Experimental Station of Arid Zones (EEZA) in Spain before completing a postdoc at The University of New Mexico. Here at UBC she works with Mark Johnson doing agricultural research in Costa Rica and Brazil.
Lisa Powell is jointly appointed in IRES and at the University of the Fraser Valley. She works with the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and UVF’s Agriburban Research Centre. She completed a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Studies and Sustainability from the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. in mathematics from Vanderbilt, and B.A. in mathematics from Harvard. Her work focuses on food systems and conflicts and negotiations over agricultural land use.
Photo Credit: James Baker from flickr/ Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Regents Professor of Soil Science & Agroecology
Washington State University
Abstract: Organic agriculture has a history of being contentious and is considered by some as an inefficient approach to food production. Yet organic foods and beverages are a rapidly growing market segment in the global food industry. Here, I discuss the performance of organic farming in light of four key sustainability metrics: productivity, environmental impact, economic viability, and social wellbeing. Organic farming systems produce lower yields compared with conventional agriculture. However, they are more profitable and environmentally friendly, and deliver equally or more nutritious foods that contain less (or no) pesticide residues, compared with conventional farming. Although organic agriculture has an untapped potential role to play in establishing sustainable farming systems, no single approach will safely feed the planet. Rather, a blend of organic and other innovative farming systems is needed for global food and ecosystem security.
Bio: Dr. John Reganold has shaped his career by his interest in agriculture and soil science, receiving his Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently Regents Professor of Soil Science and Agroecology at Washington State University. He has spent 30-plus years bringing a blend of innovative research and teaching on sustainable farming systems into the mainstream of higher education and food production. Dr. Reganold has close to 200 publications in scientific journals, magazines, and proceedings, including Science, Nature, and Scientific American. His former students are on the front lines of sustainability around the world, bringing food security to sub-Saharan Africa for the U.S. Agency for International Development, adapting quinoa to the salty soils of Utah, working on agroecology for Pacific Foods in Tualatin, Oregon, and turning wastes into resources in Haiti.
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New this year: With humanity’s creation of a new geological era marked by dominant human influences on planetary processes, the Anthropocene seems to offer little hope.
And yet, the same ingenuity that enables human domination over the Earth also allows a certain genius in addressing the many rising environmental and sustainability challenges.
Hope in the Anthropocene will showcase such inspirations and solutions in tackling climate change, harnessing energy, feeding humanity, governing states, and meeting our collective water and sanitation needs all while respecting Indigenous peoples and protecting nature and its benefits for people.
A collaboration between Green College and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Hope in the Anthropocene will feature 6 accomplished speakers from around the world presenting in the IRES Seminar Series.
Photo Credit: Ashwin Kamath from flickr/ Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract: Mounting concerns about resource stewardship and environmental quality continue to reshape expectations about buildings and their performance. This has led to more complex building designs, incorporating materials, and technologies, needing to meet myriad standards and rating systems. However, the buildings have failed to deliver on their designers’ intentions, falling far short of their promise. The gap between design expectations and building performance in practice has been persistent. A leading theory identifies the fractured processes of: designing, building, commissioning and operating a building as the root cause of this challenge.
Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a method for delivering building projects through contractual risk sharing among all actors in a building project enforcing collective responsibility for the performance of the projects. Ghazal will discuss the performance of IPD, the experience of industry professionals with this method across the US and Canada, and describe the potential of IPD for addressing the challenge of delivering high performance buildings.
This seminar video will be posted on our website after Ghazal’s research has been published.
Please check back here at a later date.
Bio: Ghazal is a PhD Candidate, working with Prof. Hadi Dowlatabadi. She got her undergraduate degree in Architecture from Shiraz University, Iran and a Master of Science (MSc) in Renewable Energy and Architecture from the University of Nottingham, UK. Ghazal’s PhD research focuses on examining the effectiveness of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) in enhancing the practices and project outcomes in the building industry. Before joining the RMES program, Ghazal worked as an architect and a building sustainability consultant. She is currently working as a sustainability consultant for high performance buildings at Lower Mainland Facilities Management, a department that manages the facilities of the four health care organizations in the Lower Mainland, BC.
Photo Credit: George Rex from flickr/ Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract:
The colonial history of First Nations fishing on the British Columbia coast is undeniably a history of dispossession and an often-brutal restructuring of indigenous food regimes. This included but was not limited to the criminalization of acts of fishing (e.g., use of weirs and traps), trade and territorial access; the reduction of all fishing to household need only; and the racial assignation of licenses and fishing permission to non-aboriginal fishers only. More recently, a series of supreme court decisions have begun to overturn some restrictions, and myriad acts of ‘practicing fishing rights’ are evident on the ground. Going fishing has thus become (with due critical humor): “Ted is out practicing his aboriginal rights [to fish]”. But, just what the right to fish or harvest other traditional foods might mean is an open question. This collaborative study examines one effort to answer a challenge posed by the ‘Namgis First Nation: What would it take to become food sovereign? By food sovereign, we mean practicing fully the right to feed a community of 1000 through local hunting, fishing, gathering, cultivating and processing primarily traditional foods? What would and could people eat daily? How much is needed and by what logic? Can food be processed, stored and distributed locally? And what other kinds of local food production might also make sense? The answer is varied and often surprising, particularly when considered in juxtaposition to the cost and effort of procuring market foods. Results include discussion of different possible diets, the social life and organization of food, and the potential for a renewed and vital food system. We conclude with a brief set of theoretical challenges to theories of food sovereignty and their meaning in the face of empirical and field-based examinations of the possibilities for becoming food sovereign.
This seminar will not be filmed.
Bio:
Terre Satterfield is an interdisciplinary social scientist; professor of culture, risk and the environment; and (after five years) is outgoing director of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. Her research concerns sustainable thinking and action in the context of environmental management and decision making. She studies natural resource controversies; cultural risk and cultural ecosystem services; and the perceived risk of new technologies (gene drive and nano-technologies). Recently she has also worked on tensions between indigenous communities and the state and/or regulatory dilemmas regarding First Nations interest and environmental assessment. Her work with co-authors (many of whom are part of IRES) has been published in journals such as: Nature; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Environmental Science and Technology; PLOS One; Global Environmental Change; Ecological Applications, Conservation Biology; Ecology and Society; Journal of Environmental Management; Biosciences; Land Economics; Science and Public Policy; Ecological Economics; and Risk Analysis. Her books include: The Anatomy of a Conflict: Emotion, Knowledge and Identity in Old Growth Forests; What’s Nature Worth? (with Scott Slovic); and The Earthscan Reader in Environmental Values (with Linda Kalof).
Photo Credit: Adam Bautz from flickr/ Creative Commons
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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ABSTRACT
An Indigenous perspective on hope is to understand that hope is an essential element to inspire the courage to do things differently, since doing the same things will only produce the same results. Hope inspires change. Inspirations for sustainability solutions will require opportunities to do things in new and different ways, to make the most impact and the most sense. Unless people can shift themselves away from current models of dependency on the unsustainable practices evident in a system triggering unbridled development some fundamental questions are required. What does that “dependency” look like if unpacked? What does ecological sustainability mean for everyday working people? Where does “sustainability” begin? If hope to be created, where can solutions that will shift the paradigm best take shape? Solutions may mean actively finding tools for “whole community change.” The seminar will cover some solution-inspired ideas based on several examples providing hope.
Photo credit: Laura Sawchuk
BIO
Jeannette Armstrong is Syilx Okanagan, a fluent speaker and teacher of the Nsyilxcn Okanagan language and a traditional knowledge keeper of the Okanagan Nation. She is a founder of En’owkin, the Okanagan Nsyilxcn language and knowledge institution of higher learning of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. She currently is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Okanagan Philosophy at UBC Okanagan. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Ethics and Syilx Indigenous Literatures. She is the recipient of the EcoTrust Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership and in 2016 the BC George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. She is an author whose published works include poetry, prose and children’s literary titles and academic writing on a wide variety of Indigenous issues. She currently serves on Canada’s Traditional Knowledge Subcommittee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
New this year: With humanity’s creation of a new geological era marked by dominant human influences on planetary processes, the Anthropocene seems to offer little hope.
And yet, the same ingenuity that enables human domination over the Earth also allows a certain genius in addressing the many rising environmental and sustainability challenges.
Hope in the Anthropocene will showcase such inspirations and solutions in tackling climate change, harnessing energy, feeding humanity, governing states, and meeting our collective water and sanitation needs all while respecting Indigenous peoples and protecting nature and its benefits for people.
A collaboration between Green College and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Hope in the Anthropocene will feature 6 accomplished speakers from around the world presenting in the IRES Seminar Series.
Photo credit: Robert Hensley from flickr/Creative Commons
Hope in the Anthropocene is co-sponsored by the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC.
