Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

New paper: Bay of Fundy system dynamics and scenarios

Former L1 ResNet postdoc Lara Cornejo has led a tremendous new paper, out open access this week in Ocean and Coastal Management. The paper, Decision-making and ecosystem service dimensions of managed dyke realignment in the complex coastal landscapes of the Bay of Fundy, updates the simplified one-way flows we conceived for ecosystem service tradeoffs in our baseline 2021 Facets paper. Lara used system dynamics modelling to co-create with a range of experts–from universities, federal and provincial government departments, consulting firms, an ENGO and Indigenous organization (all co-authors)–models showing the decision-making processes leading to managed dyke realignment and the ecosystem service outcomes that result. The models drew on lots of published papers and student theses, and allowed trade-offs and synergies to be synthesized. But she didn’t stop there! She and McGill PhD candidate Elson Galang used the four scenarios that emerged from our environmental futures workshop in late 2022 as thought experiments for the models (see below). It is a great read. Bravo!

Artist Emma Fitzgerald’s visualizations of our four scenarios of environmental futures for the Bay of Fundy dykelands.

Recent SRES visitors

External assessors Christopher Ling and Michelle Gray with me as they finish up their site visit to SRES.

We hosted some important visitors into the SRES suite last week. First, on April 1 and 2 we hosted Christopher Ling (of Royal Roads) and Michelle Gray (of UNB), who are the external assessors for SRES’ unit and program review this year. I’m not sure that it is supposed to be fun when your unit is being reviewed, but thanks to Drs Ling and Gray, ours really has been. We are looking forward to hearing what they have to say about SRES, MES and MREM after their 360-degree enquiries during their stay.

Federal Liberal candidate and 2004 MES alumnus, Shannon Miedema, visits the SRES suite, April 3, 2025

Also great fun was the visit of 2004 MES alumnus Shannon Miedema to the suite on April 3. She is the current Liberal candidate for Halifax, and visited the SRES student society’s coffee break. The students were interested to see her hard-bound MES thesis about her work in Palau, which seemed like an ancient document given they only submit online these days. Was glad to host, and ‘launch’ our new SRES stickers with her and the students. They went like hotcakes! Happily we’ll have to re-order soon.

Winter 2025 panels, presentations and events

Panelists and UNBSJ student organizers for the Climate Change Science and Action Panel on Mar 20 in Saint John.

On March 16th, this blog turned ten years old, and that feels like something to celebrate. But I’ve been a bit remiss on content so far this year. Last week’s visit to UNBSJ at the invitation of the Biological Sciences PhD student organization is a great prompt to remedy that. I joined a panel on Climate Change Science and Action with Moe Qureshi of the Conservation Council of NB and Helen Gurney-Smith of DFO in St. Andrews to talk across scales from global to local. The 2 hour discussion was followed up by a great networking event at the Haven Music Hall where I got to meet more of the students, some local partners and professors. Thanks to the organizers for the great event.

Earlier this term I also enjoyed meeting with the Local Government Group of the Green Shores program, a Maritimes outpost of the program originally developed by the Stewardship Council of BC run out of TransCoastal Adaptations at SMU. During that online presentation I learned that in December Green Shores developed an 8-page publication for the general public based on the final report from the NRCan project Making Room for Movement and the paper I led last year on Reimagining nature-based coastal adaptation using the 5Rs (reimagine, reserve, relocate, restore, reinforce), published in the Journal of Flood Risk Management. The policy brief, Green Shores and the 5Rs for Nature-based Coastal Adaptation , shows how Green Shores is operationalizing the framework we outlined. More recently I reprised my presentation to Green Shores  to the TransCoastal Adaptations Lesson of the Week group.

Presenting to the Green Shores Local Government Group on Jan 15, 2024.

Other key events in recent months have been profile-raising events for SRES within Dalhousie, including the Graduate Fair (in person and online) in early February, the Sustainable Development Goals Expo in early March, and today’s engagement event with Black and African Nova Scotian high schoolers.

Energy landscapes in Nevada

I’ve recently returned from a trip to Nevada, including side trips to Death Valley, California, and Grand Canyon West, on Hualapai land AZ. Some of that included views of large-scale renewable infrastructure. Above is a video (taken by Eleanor Couper, and including a Harry Styles soundtrack) of large-scale wind in western Arizona. But we also had a chance to visit the Hoover Dam (below), as well as the town that built it, lovely Boulder City (one of two municipalities in Nevada in which gambling is not legal). Alongside the freeway heading back to Las Vegas for the flight out we passed lots of large-scale solar installations, too. Without a cloud over four days travel there seems few better places for it.

Hoover Dam with a view of Lake Mead behind (photo: Eleanor Couper)

 

New review paper by Robin on place and mobility

Very excited to announce the first paper out of Robin Willcocks-Musselman’s interdisciplinary PhD process, co-authored with her committee members Karen Foster, Julia Baird and Julia Woodhall-Melnik. This open access paper, Finding mobility in place attachment research: lessons for managed retreat, is in a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Climate that came out of the Columbia Managed Retreat conference back in 2023. In this thorough review tackled in her comprehensive exam, Robin goes deep on theories of place and what they have to say about mobility overall, and the specific implications for forced relocations such as during managed retreat for climate adaptation. The implications can be positive and negative, and her empirical work will seek to explore this in more detail in relation to managed retreat in the Atlantic region. Bravo, Robin!

This table from the paper synthesizes the positive and negative implications of place for managed retreat.

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