Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Category: research output (Page 1 of 27)

New review paper by Robin on place and mobility

February 12, 2025 /

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.

Two papers out on Bay of Fundy by Elson

January 23, 2025 /
Figure 4 in Galang et al (2025) in Sustainability Science, showing increases in empathy measures.

Figure 4 in Galang et al (2025) in Sustainability Science, showing increases in empathy measures.

Kudos to McGill Bennett-lab NSERC ResNet PhD student Elson Galang whose first two PhD papers came out this past week, both based (at least in part) on the workshops that he led at SMU about the Bay of Fundy NSERC ResNet case study in November 2022. The first one came out in Sustainability Science on January 16th, Co-imagining future scenarios can enhance environmental actors’ empathy toward future generations and non-human life-forms, that found measurable impacts on participants’ empathy towards future people and other life forms, the latter even lasting 3 months after the event. This is tantalizing evidence of the value of participating in the development of environmental scenarios. The second paper came out in Environmental Science & Policy on Jan 21st, Participatory scenario planning: A social learning approach to build systems thinking and trust for sustainable environmental governance. This shares more good news about participation in such processes in relation to the cognitive, relational and normative dimensions of social learning. Both papers also describe innovative methodological tools for assessing these complex ideas. Congratulations, Elson!

 

New paper: from sustainable grazing learner to leader

January 2, 2025 /

On New Year’s Eve, a new paper came out online first and OA in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems led by former postdoc Brooke McWherter, called From learner to leader: exploring learning, motivations, and roles of regenerative grazing mentors. This paper emerged from her collaboration with Farmers for Climate Solutions and the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, funded by FCS and Mitacs, that followed and assessed the national  Farm Resilience Mentorship Program (FaRM) for adaptive grazing. This paper is based on interviews with half of the program’s mentors that explored their own learning journeys, and how and why they became mentors to others. I a meta move, Brooke also mentored MREM alum and RA Hunar Arora, who is a co-author on this piece.

Two people labelled social supports and mentor pull a learner up a stylized hill showing various stages of learning.

Figure 2 in the new ASFS paper led by Brooke, showing the process of becoming a mentor.

New ResNet paper feat. Bay of Fundy

December 6, 2024 /

A quick note today to celebrate a new paper out in People and Nature, led by ResNet McGill PhD student Yiyi Zhang. The paper, Servicesheds connect people to the landscapes upon which they depend, uses two landscape case studies to demonstrate a new framework (see below) for delineating servicesheds. In the Bay of Fundy she explored “fisheries benefitting fishers, and flood protection benefitting flood-prone communities”. The Monteregie of Quebec is the other case study, with a focus on agriculture. Her study explicitly explores the impacts of tidal wetlands on coastal protection compared with the dykes that substitute that service. An ambitious study, conceptually and practically. Congratulations Yiyi and her team at McGill, including Brian Robinson and Hugo Thierry.

Zhang et al. figure 2 outlining the serviceshed framework

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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