Category: Infrastructure (Page 3 of 14)

Climax thinking on the coast – new paper in Environmental Management

July 2, 2022 / k8sherren

The experimental design for our 2019 focus groups, inspired by climax thinking

Happy finally to have the first paper out open access in Environmental Management from the SRES node of the SMU-led NRCan-funded Making Room for Movement project. This paper tells the results of the online (pre-COVID!) focus groups that we ran with coastal property owners back in summer 2019, and specifically, the impact of the experimental ‘priming’ treatments that MES Krysta Sutton and I applied. Framing is a more common idea than priming. In framing you design the message itself to be acceptable to your audience by emphasizing some aspects and de-emphasizing others. Priming is more like setting the stage: getting people thinking in ways that will allow difficult messages–like those about coastal adaptation and retreat–to later land productively. We used three experimental treatments based on the climax thinking framework, and tested the impacts quantitatively (using pre-post tests) and qualitatively (analyzing focus group discussions). Getting people thinking about future generations was most clearly effective, but it was also helpful to get people thinking about altruism in their community (past and present). This suggests some useful ways to engage with residents in areas faced by sea-level rise. Briefly: Don’t look backward, but forward to future generations, and outward to focus on the meaning in tackling shared challenges together.

ResNet panel at BOFEP

May 25, 2022 / k8sherren

Cover slide from our ResNet L1 BOFEP panel, May 19, 2022

Back in 2020 I submitted a proposal for a panel for the ResNet L1 team at the Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership (BOFEP) meeting to be held in Truro. We finally had a chance to deliver that panel last week, after two years of delays due to COVID. BOFEP was held in partnership with ACCESS (Atlantic Canada Coastal and Estuarine Science Society) , which led to a very diverse set of presentations from isotope analysis to citizen science and beyond. Our panel was originally designed to present the Facets paper as it was in development; instead we showed how ResNet L1 was filling in the gaps in the conceptual model we presented in the Facets paper on services like cultural, storm protection, carbon, and pollination, and how that related to practice.Being in Truro also enabled a great meeting with ResNet partners, Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, visited lovely Victoria Park for a walk, and enjoyed a great public forum on flooding in Truro and the region.

That last item was the standout event for me. Truro Planning Director and a local African Nova Scotian resident demonstrated the political and justice dimensions of flood planning decisions in the region. Coincidentally or not, that theme was taken up yesterday on CBC Information Morning by Lynn Jones, who seems to be a part-time neighbour of that resident. The resident is now surrounded by homes that their owners could afford to raise on pads to the 1988 requirements currently in force for development on the flood plain, and he (downhill) feels he is receiving their runoff, worsening his situation. He can’t get insurance, but can’t really afford to raise or leave. He thinks the river should be dredged to store more water but the CBCL modelling suggests the sedimentation is so high it simply wouldn’t work. Meanwhile, Jones says her community, before they left or were squeezed out, used to ‘work with nature’ by keeping boats in the backyard so they could navigate the street, a pretty extreme form of what in adaptation terms would be called ‘accommodation’. She wants to see her community come back to these ‘ancestral lands’, but the risks today are higher than they were then. The past is a poor predictor of the future. This additional dimension to the challenges of Truro’s complex flood situation echoes those in other places like New Orleans where minorities are relegated to marginal lands, build strong communities and then are first displaced when conditions change: adaptation would mean not helping people to stay or return to such increasingly at-risk places, but such decisions have uneven impacts. Today, however, it sounds like flood plain development is still being permitted by Truro’s pro-development council and provincial UARB, in full awareness of expanding flood risk areas, locking in more risk and complexity for residents, the town and the wider public purse that will eventually have to wade in and make it right.

ResNet AGM, in person

May 13, 2022 / k8sherren

The PIs and partners discussing strategic planning in groups at Jouvence, during the ResNet AGM in Orford, QC, May 4-5, 2022.

It was wonderful to be physically present with about 60 of the national NSERC ResNet team at Jouvence in Orford, QC, for the first in person event since we were funded in mid-2019. It was a wonderful event, substantively and socially. Over 30 students and postdocs attended and drove discussions of science and ethics alike, and networked into working groups to strengthen linkages between the landscape, theme and synthesis teams into the second half of the project. There was lots of fun, including campfires and a pub viewing of my NHK debut . I got lots of new ideas for L1 (the Bay of Fundy dykelands and tidal wetlands case study) from talking to the students and postdocs about their work and returned to work reinvigorated, if exhausted. It was also really the first chance for the L1 team to gather together, and I enjoyed the extra time in this lovely setting to get to know one another.

Some of the L1 team during the mapping workshop on the first night of the ResNet AGM.

Quebec’s return to indoor masking was a bit of a relief, and Danika van Proosdij and I took two days to drive each way for additional protection. It seems to have worked. That drive gave us the opportunity to show newly arrived L1 ResNet postdoc, Lara Cornejo, around the Bay of Fundy region. It was also my first time to the Converse dyke realignment site, though I didn’t find it as cold as Lara, and it was great to have Danika there as a tour guide. We also stopped by the St. Lawerence wetlands at La Pocatiere, and to see the wetland recovery where the tidal gate was removed on the Petitcodiac in Moncton.

Return road trip from Quebec, with Danika and new postdoc Lara, we took time to visit the Converse realignment project, with the Amherst wind farm in the background.

Renewed resistance to wind energy in NS

April 19, 2022 / k8sherren

The Amherst wind farm emerges from a blizzard as my train carriage whips past, April 2022.

Interesting to see new resistance emerging to wind energy in NS, using disappointingly familiar language. For instance, in Inverness County last week, to paraphrase, we’re not opposed to wind energy, of course, but this is the wrong place for it. A few weeks ago I submitted a letter to a process that was underway in the Municipality of Cumberland to review their wind turbine regulations, as a result of conflict over the proposed Higgins Mountain wind project. I drew on research by MES students Ellen Chappell and Mehrnoosh Mohammadi in that letter (it is included as Appendix C, p. 46-47, in Plan Cumberland’s Public Engagement report of their review). Ellen’s thesis work showed that wind energy support is quite strong in the Amherst area, even among those who can see wind turbines currently. Mehrnoosh’s work on renewable energy in amenity landscapes like vineyards showed that visitors accept that landscapes are for more than just the reason they are visiting. In fact, if vineyards brag about their energy infrastructure, it is possible that visitors will see it as an asset. Resistance threatens the next phase of Nova Scotia’s energy transition, and is characteristic of climax thinking: erroneously believing that our landscapes are in a final and stable state. A few highlights to my letter to Plan Cumberland follow:

I believe it is important to transition to what is often called a ‘multifunctional’ landscape norm, where we allow for a layering of energy into other land uses. In Canada we have not had to do much of this yet thanks to our large area, but others have. In NS we must learn how to as our population grows and electrification proceeds to reduce carbon emissions. Evidence from some national survey work I have collaborated on (also attached) suggests it is good for us to be exposed to the energy sources on which we depend. This strengthens our support for renewable modes, and may in fact inspire decisions to conserve energy, which I’ll talk more about next. The truth is that energy has a footprint—and deserves a footprint—in our lives. Hiding that footprint only makes us less likely to understand our dependency and its costs. …

… When it came to trying to predict people’s willingness to have wind energy in view of their home the two strongest predictors were agreement to the following two statements:
• Seeing wind turbines from my home reminds me that electricity I use has to be generated somewhere.
• Energy is just a commodity; if we can develop it to sell elsewhere (e.g. New England), then we should.
… those who agreed to both statements have made a shift in their thinking: putting energy alongside other regional commodities as viable for export beyond local needs (as they do in more established energy-producing regions and potentially enabling a more resilient regional grid), while taking responsibility for bearing the costs of their own energy consumption too. …

Survey responses speak to the importance of being willing to tackle new challenges and seize new opportunities rather than hide from them by trying to hold landscapes as they are—particularly those designed for needs other than the ones we face today—or otherwise trying to exclude energy from ideas of what our landscape is ‘for’.

Making Room for Movement framework

December 22, 2021 / k8sherren

Cover of our NRCan-funded Framework report

Delighted to report that our Making Room for Movement project, funded by Natural Resources Canada Climate Change Adaptation Fund and ably led by PI Danika van Proosdij out of SMU, now has a final report available to all. This report, which we’ve been calling the Framework, is a synthesis of several years of research in this project by my lab (Krysta Sutton’s MES on coastal resident focus groups and climax thinking) and that of Patricia Manuel and Eric Rapaport at Planning (who among other things prepared six excellent case studies of ‘making room for movement’ in Nova Scotia), engaging with Danika’s TransCoastal Adaptations: Centre for Nature-based Solutions that is involved in on-ground dyke realignment, tidal wetland restoration and other living shorelines projects. Colleagues like Caytlyn McFadden, Yvonne Reeves were critical in synthesis mode and Postdoctoral fellow HM Tuihedur Rahman helped draw insights for the literature; and great partners like CB Wetlands, CBCL and the Ecology Action Centre helped us ground our insights.

Climax thinking on the coast – new paper in Environmental Management

ResNet panel at BOFEP

ResNet AGM, in person

Renewed resistance to wind energy in NS

Making Room for Movement framework

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