Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Category: Energy (Page 1 of 22)

New paper: Image auto-coding tools for SIA

December 18, 2025 /

Yan Chen’s second PhD paper came out today in a special issue of Landscape Ecology on Artificial intelligence (AI) and landscape ecology: tools, perspectives, and complementarities. The paper, Image auto-coding tools for social impact assessment: leveraging social media data to understand human dimensions of hydroelectricity landscape changes in Canada delivers on what Yan said to me at the end of her Masters work back in 2016–after coding thousands of images manually–that maybe there is a way for computers to do more of the heavy lifting.

Locations of the chronosequence used in Yan Chen’s PhD thesis.

In this paper, we use the pre-trained AI Google Cloud Vision to understand the social impact of hydro dams based on social media of a chronosequence of sites (see right): from Mactaquac in NB (built in the 60s), to Oldman in AB (built in the 90s) and Site C in BC (which completed while her PhD was winding up). The paper has insights for the landscape and social implications of dam, and the use of social media for SIA. Congrats, Yan!

New paper: Q-method for rural large-scale solar

November 30, 2025 /

Last week a paper led by Emily Key (Snair), recent MES alumna, came out in Energy Research & Social Science, with her Dutch committee member Dirk Oudes (Wageningen) and I as co-authors. The paper,  Integrate and embrace or isolate and hide? Using Q-method to understand how to incorporate large-scale solar in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, is open access. This study doesn’t ask whether we should have large-scale solar (LSS), but how. Emily used Q-methodology, a statement-sorting methodology, with interviews, to identify discourses around LSS in rural Nova Scotia towns that have a range of experience with the technology. The two key discourses that emerged connect to some common debates in the literature around landscape management (see below). This allowed her to suggest important questions that should be discussed with communities being considered for LSS, questions that might be useful for lots of other sustainability transitions as well. Congratulations, Emily!

Energy landscapes in Nevada

February 17, 2025 /

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)

 

Eastern shore citizen science for TranSECT

January 2, 2025 /

Camilo Botero presents the project and preliminary results to the community at the Sheet Harbour Lion’s Club.

Thanks to Moira Donovan for the great article out on CBC today, Eastern Shore project harnesses community for climate science. The piece is about one of the 14 work packages within TranSECT, the large research project I co-lead out of the new CFREF project Transforming Climate Action. The Dal-based team for this work package about risk governance and citizen science comprises Camilo Botero, Ron Pelot and Floris Goerlandt, in partnership with Eastern Shore churches and schools. This article provides me a great excuse to post a few pictures from the end of November when TranSECT co-lead Ian Stewart and I attended an event in Sheet Harbour recognizing the end of the pilot phase of this innovative citizen science project.

The Bishop of the Anglican church diocese that is a key partner for the project reflects on what she has heard. 

On the return, Ian and I spied these across the inlet and went across to investigate: massive ‘transition pieces’ for offshore wind turbines, shipped there from Europe and awaiting further transportation to Martha’s Vineyard in the US). Soon I expect we’ll be seeing more of these arriving for use off Nova Scotia.

Landscapes on the Edge

October 4, 2024 /

Evan Andrews of MUN introduced my CAG keynote in August, 2024

A quick note to say that the text of my keynote to the 2024 Canadian Association of Geographer’s conference has now been published by Canadian Geographies. The keynote was called Landscapes on the Edge, and I enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on a diversity of my empirical and theoretical work in coastal adaptation and renewable energy over the past few years–with wonderful Honours, Masters and PhD students–and place them within my own lived experience as a pulp town brat. I was so pleased to be asked to convert it to a paper so it can have a life of its own. Thanks to Canadian Geographies Editor Agnieszka Leszczynski for the encouragement.

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