Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: coastal adaptation (Page 1 of 5)

Fall 2025 lab fun

December 9, 2025 /

A few lab members, and hangers on, celebrating Alex’s (right) wedding at Ramblers back in October

More lab folks at Ramblers

This has been an active term in the Sherren lab, so this is an omnibus email to note a few things that have been going without mention so far. Some have been big events, like Alex’s wedding and wedding party (see above, right), and conference presentations at the Atlantic Canadian Association of Geographer’s meeting hosted online by SMU in November (Alex, Bethany, Anna).

We’ve had a great schedule of semi-weekly lab meetings where everyone has taken turns talking about their own academic journey to this point. An unanticipated delight has been the delight that has come with baby and childhood photos in those presentations. Midway through the term, Chris and Elson hosted a lab art event that repurposed an old Ikea poster we had lying around, and the result was stunning!

The lab visits St. Croix dykeland with Dr. Jeremy Lundholm.

Squinting into the sun at Grand Pre (missing Athena)

More recently we had a (cold) lab trip up to the dykelands with CBWES plant ecologist and ResNet colleague Jeremy Lundholm, and followed that up with a Christmas lunch at The Church in Wolfville. A full term! Thanks everyone for the enthusiasm and engagement!

Warming up at The Church in Wolfville

Coastal Zone Canada 2025

June 20, 2025 /

 

Alex Legault presents his work on the Acadian diaspora and dykeland stakeholdership to CZC2025.

Athena Iraji talks about her early findings with Nancy Anningson from TransCoastal.

Four members of my team went to Coastal Zone Canada in PEI last week, and reported an excellent event. Colleagues from TranSECT and TransCoastal also participated in many sessions there. I certainly wish I could have attended, especially after I heard that A. R. Siders was the keynote. Alex Legault (above) presented his work on the Acadian diaspora, including the new plan to put the survey back in the field to try to acquire wider perspectives. Athena Iraji presented a poster on her very first results as she explores whether the timeline of the Coastal Protection Act actually expedited coastal development in the year of its passing. We’re so grateful to CZC for the support they gave Athena to attend this event. Keahna Margeson presented the results of her second PhD paper, which uses survey results around causeway sites in NB and NS to understand what drives support for river restoration. Finally Robin Willcocks Musselman presented the results of her recent paper on place and managed retreat, and introduced her empirical research plan. I hope CZC stops scheduling for the same week as IASNR, so I can attend the next one.

Feature in DalNews

January 28, 2024 /

Me on the Northumberland Shore

DalNews published a nice profile of me last week, written by Andrew Riley, associated with my involvement in the big Transforming Climate Action CFREF project being led by Dalhousie, with collaboration from UQAR, Laval and Memorial. Though I’m not always comfortable with ‘big science’ of this kind, I’ve been enjoying being part of Cluster 3 of that large grant–the part focused upon Adapting Equitably–thanks to existing collaborators like Ian Stewart, Patricia Manuel, and Fanny Noisette and the many new collaborators I’m meeting along the way. We are currently in the thick of writing the official proposal before the end of March.

New review paper: social license to operate and coastal management

December 8, 2023 /

Table 1 in Margeson et al. 2023 showing factors that influenced coastal
SLO with associated themes that
emerged from the literature

Congratulations to Keahna and her PhD committee for the publication of her first comprehensive exam as a review in Environmental Management yesterday, The Role of Social License in Non-Industrial Marine and Coastal Planning: a Scoping Review. The idea of social license to operate is often used in industrial contexts, but in Nova Scotia we know that public acceptance can also be an issue with coastal activities such as conservation or restoration and related  nature-based coastal adaptation techniques. Using an SES lens Keahna reviewed 85 relevant papers–most from Europe and North America–and found key drivers to be sense of place, costs and benefits, perceived risk, trust and knowledge.

Transforming Climate Action

April 28, 2023 /

Stand in front of the fish, they said. But I don’t work on fish!

Excited to hear the official announcement today that the CFREF (Canada First Research Excellence Fund) has funded Dalhousie’s largest research grant in its history, Transforming Climate Action: Addressing the Missing Ocean. (Too bad the acronym of TCA is the same as TransCoastal Adaptations, my other interdiscplinary coastal team.) I’m on this one, thanks to the third goal of “people-centric adaptation solutions to ocean and climate change based on science, developed in collaboration with communities and informed by Indigenous ways of knowing” (as the Dal President’s memo put it earlier today). In the lead-up they did a little profile of me that you can find here.

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