Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Saltmarsh Breakthrough

June 11, 2025 /

I was a minor contributor to the State of the World’s Saltmarshes 2025 report led by WWF that was launched this week at the UN Oceans Conference in France. The report aims to launch a ‘saltmarsh breakthrough’ similar to the one sparked for mangroves, drawing attention to the importance of saltmarshes in our climate future. My work with TransCoastal Adaptations and NSERC ResNet in the Bay of Fundy has in part explored the human dimensions of these important landscapes in a place where they’ve been largely converted to agricultural use through dyking and draining.

The UN Oceans Conference is just one of the conferences I’m not attending this week.  I had already been torn between the Coastal Zone Canada conference in PEI (where four members of my team are presenting) and the International Association for Society and Natural Resources in Vancouver (which I did register for and plan to attend). However, roots in my sewer line and the inevitable nasty backup mean that I’m here keeping company with members of my insurance company’s remediation team. I’m getting lovely notes from people at both events. I wish I was there, too!

RSC College Meeting in Montreal

May 22, 2025 /

Frank, Audrey, Ana, Isabelle, me, Nicole and Igor (L-R) at the lovely McGill Faculty Club for dinner.

I took a flying trip back to Quebec yesterday to attend the annual meeting of the RSC College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Over a day and a half we have had excellent discussions about ‘inclusive excellence’, one of the pillars of the college, breakout groups for the interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) and working groups, and interactions with young academies from Japan, Germany and Israel. The breakout group I led for ‘Ask Canada‘ generated a rich discussion, including new angles around the need to integrate geopolitics and AI into the IRG. While I balked initially at another trip to Montreal so soon after last month, it has been enjoyable and a productive use of my time (and Aeroplan points). Thanks to Russ, Amelia, Audrey and others for the organization and hosting.

TranSECT meets in Quebec City

May 5, 2025 /

Things get started at the TranSECT meeting at Universite Laval, April 28, 2025

TranSECT co-leads: Ian Stewart (Kings/Dal), Melanie Lemire (Laval), me, Fanny Noisette (UQAR) and Project Manager Line Bourdages (L-R).

After ResNet I went straight to Quebec City for a meeting of TranSECT and the wider Transforming Climate Action projects. It was wonderful to spend more time with our TranSECT colleagues in particular, and start tackling some of our shared research objectives together over the Monday and Tuesday.  We worked hard and had some social time also, at the Temps Perdu bar near the Universite Laval campus. Ian and I invited our incoming PhD student Christopher Randall and our incoming PDF Jessica Beaudette, who joined us before their actual start dates to get a good sense of the community they are joining. And what a community it is! I especially enjoyed our discussions of risk assessment and governance, and of dykelands and nature-based solutions of various kinds. The generative scribing of Deline from Agora supported all some sessions, and can be seen in some of these pictures. We made particular progress on plans for some related workshops and events over the coming year, bringing together Nova Scotia and Quebec parts of the TranSECT team. It was also wonderful to see students and postdocs networking and starting to build a cohort feeling. This was supported by the shared bus trip home to Halifax on Friday.

TranSECT (Cluster 3.3) at the end of our sub-meeting, April 29, 2025.

Saving carbon by car-pooling home.

Last ResNet AGM

April 26, 2025 /

Elson runs an icebreaker: which way is north, again?

Alex Legault and I grab a local Stukley beer at Jouvence, April 24, 2025

It was wonderful but also a little bittersweet to join with colleagues from the Bay of Fundy case study landscape (Danika, Brittney, Kiirsti and Alex) and from other landscape and theme teams nationally, for the last NSERC ResNet AGM. We again met at lovely Jouvence, near Orford in QC. Though we are heading into the project’s last year, there were still lots of students present and clearly plenty of scholarly work afoot. We spent a good bit of time looking at what we’ve accomplished as a group, but just as much time looking forward: how can we continue to leverage this work and these networks to make progress in achieving sustainable working landscapes in Canada? Our key messages were workshopped (“stress tested”) and many new research threads were shown as emerging from ResNet. Thanks to PI Elena Bennett for bringing us all together: to do this work in the first instance, and for this last opportunity to gather, celebrate and plot.

Lovely Lac Stukely was a mirror.

New paper: Bay of Fundy system dynamics and scenarios

April 15, 2025 /

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.

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