Tag: coastal adaptation (Page 2 of 5)

New paper on resistance to flood risk mapping

March 30, 2023 / k8sherren

Also congratulations to Sam for being named as the 2023 recipient of the Sustainability Impact Award at Dalhousie!

Samantha Howard’s Honours research was published today in The Canadian Geographer (last edition before it changes to Canadian Geographies to allow for gender neutral in French). Her new open access paper, Flood risk mapping in southwestern Nova Scotia: Perceptions and concerns, explores drivers of resistance to publicly available flood risk mapping in Liverpool and Bridgewater, NS, using the dimensions of climax thinking. In her AdMail-distributed survey, Samantha found that generally public flood risk mapping is supported, at least when we asked about it using positively phrased statements. But 16% of people agreed that having such mapping available publicly was an unacceptable risk for real estate values. One in six is low, but can be impactful if those people wield economic or political power. Exploring what drove that expression of resistance, the usual variables had no effect (flood experience, flood risk assessment, perceptions of change in flood risk). But when climax variables were included, two in particular, it almost quadrupled the predictive power of the model. Which variables? Agreeing that “I am not able to cope with the land changes required to deal with significant increases in flood risk at this point in my life” and “Flood management decisions I make do not have implications for others”. This self-orientation even trumped being a parent. This survey served as a good pilot for her current Masters research, currently being written up (when she’s not busy accepting University awards, that is). Congratulations, Sam!

National Observer story on Chignecto Isthmus report

April 11, 2022 / k8sherren

The story features this picture of TransCoastal’s dyke realignment project (and signage) at Converse near Aulac on the Chignecto Isthmus joining NS to NB.

CBC’s Moira Donovan has written an article for the National Observer about the new report on the future protection of the Chignecto Isthmus. When it came out there was some consternation in the TransCoastal Adaptations team that nature-based solutions like dyke realignment and tidal wetland restoration weren’t built into the solution. There is at least 15 years of local research on the value of such approaches, and a great time series of dyke realignments to learn more from, but consulting engineers clearly aren’t leveraging it yet. The report options seem designed instead to prioritize agricultural land values and thus ‘hold the line’ with higher and stronger walls. Not even the NS Department of Agriculture that manages the dyke system on this side of the Bay has the ethos that all current dykelands can be maintained in the face of climate change. NSERC ResNet is looking to understand the tradeoffs involved in these and other dykeland decisions, including complex dynamics such as carbon tradeoffs, salt water intrusion, and cultural implications across a range of constituencies.

Cluster of panel roles

February 15, 2022 / k8sherren

Show the first page of the slide show from NSIS event

Screensnap from the NSIS event on Feb 7, 2022

It has been a busy start of term, and I am startled to see it is my first posting in 2022, though the first of several in quick succession. Today was the last of a spate of online roles in the last 8 days, all of which were enjoyable. First up was a guest spot talking about social science to the students of Dalhousie’s NSERC CREATE in Leadership in Energy Sustainability (LES). That group is largely comprised of engineers but demonstrated great curiosity and asked great questions of me and my highly complementary co-panelist Tamara Krawchenko from UVic. Kudos to CRC II Karen Foster for coordinating and chairing.

That evening, I enjoyed participating as part of a ResNet-themed panel for the Nova Scotia Institute of Science. Colleagues Jeremy Lundholm (SMU), Danika van Proosdij (SMU), Alana Pindar (CBU) and I talked about the work of Landscape 1 of ResNet, and specifically the different pieces of the ecosystem services ‘puzzle’ associated with dykeland decision-making. This one is recorded, with me and Jeremy in this video, and Alana and Danika (as well as questions) in this one.

The following day, though it wasn’t a panel , I really enjoyed participating in the online Rangeland Social Science gathering, an informal event that happens pretty regularly in combination with the Society for Range Management meeting (this year happening in Albuquerque, NM). Particularly delightful was a break-out group on rangeland culture with Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, Brooke McWherter, and Katie Walsh. We’re remarkably practiced now at engaging productively online with new people, a skill I hope we hold onto (within reason) to reduce the environmental impact of academic travel.

Finally, this morning, I played the anchor role in a morning-long symposium on Coastal Zone Change in Atlantic Canada run by the Dalhousie Coastal Hydrology Lab run by Dr. Barret Kurylyk (also a ResNet colleague). That event included ResNet people including HQP Nicole LeRoux, Danika van Proosdij, as well as Patricia Manuel, collaborator in TransCoastal Adaptations and OGEN. It is a small world here in Nova Scotia.

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.

November omnibus

November 24, 2021 / k8sherren

View of the North Onslow dyke realignment and tidal wetland restoration project site, first big tide after dyke breach, Nov 8, 2021.

As in October, I have been too busy to blog this month but plenty has been happening. Gillian Kerr started working for ResNet L1 part time as a research associate to help with data stewardship and knowledge exchange. ResNet HQP Emily Wells and partner CMM’s Kara Pictou did a pilot interview for their shared work on Traditional Knowledge and climate change and the interviews are coming next. We had the first committee meeting for Keahna Margeson’s OGEN IDPhD about coastal adaptation, which includes an interdisciplinary team across SRES, Information Management, Planning, Kings, and the National Research Council. I made it up to see the Truro Onslow dyke realignment and tidal wetland restoration project (the one covered in this OECD report and this paper) during the last set of ‘high’ high tides, after the dyke was finally breached. The above photo was taken then, around 4:30 pm, and the bird life in the flooded former dykeland was cacophonous! A good sign for the biodiversity benefits of this ambitious project as well as the climate resilience benefits.

Former postdoc, HM Tuihedur Rahman, who led the paper linked above about the Truro case study, also led another recent paper in Climate Risk Management that features among the three other authors two of my lab alumni, former postdoc Wesley Tourangeau and PhD alum Bernard Soubry. Great to see such synthesis work emerging from trainees working directly together: A framework for using autonomous adaptation as a leverage point in sustainable climate adaptation.

Finally, I had fun participating in the book launch for the recent volume co-edited by Susana Batel and David Rudolph, A critical approach to the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures, published this year by Palgrave McMillin and available free online. Frequent collaborator John Parkins and I wrote a chapter in that volume with MES alum Ellen Chappell about the value of quantitative methods in critical social acceptance work on energy. The event was fascinating, and to my surprise the critical perspective of some presenters about renewable energy was in tension with the fast transition discourse coming from COP26.

Screensnap during the Nov 17, 2021, book launch for Batel and Rudolph (2021)… before the Zoom bombing event.

New paper on resistance to flood risk mapping

National Observer story on Chignecto Isthmus report

Cluster of panel roles

Making Room for Movement framework

November omnibus

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