Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: collaboration (Page 2 of 4)

Institutional entrepreneurship paper

Institutional entrepreneurship in Nova Scotia dyke realignment and salt marsh restoration, illustrated.

Institutional entrepreneurship in Nova Scotia dyke realignment and salt marsh restoration, illustrated.

Congratulations to Tuihedur for his first paper from the postdoctoral fellowship that sees him working across Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s, out today open access in Sustainability. He used his knowledge of the institutional literature to ground our existing case study of the North Onslow dyke realignment and salt marsh restoration project–first written as the Canadian chapter in an OECD report Responding to Rising Seas–and analyzed it through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship. This involved synthesizing the characteristics of such entrepreneurs from the literature, mapping the existing jurisdictional responsibilities around coastal management in Nova Scotia, and demonstrating how those responsibilities were leveraged in the flood-prone Truro area. Even in the absence of coastal protection legislation, three government departments were able to collaborate to create a new ‘way of doing things’ that served their own objectives with coastal adaptation and flood mitigation as a happy by-product.

Announcing NSERC ResNet

Coast-to-coast cream of the crop: Phil Loring, Brian Robinson, Anne Salomon, Evan Fraser and Elena Bennett all cramming slides for the NSERC SPG-N site visit at McGill back in Spring 2019.

Coast-to-coast cream of the crop: Phil Loring, Brian Robinson, Anne Salomon, Evan Fraser and Elena Bennett all cramming slides for the NSERC SPG-N site visit at McGill back in Spring 2019.

The media blackout has finally been lifted, thanks to a whimper of a press release from NSERC, that our Strategic Partnership Grant for Networks led by Elena Benett at McGill was successful! This is the culmination of a few years of partnership formation, collaboration and grant-writing. NSERC ResNet, the short name for our “network for monitoring, modeling, and managing Canada’s ecosystem services for sustainability and resilience”, will advance Ecosystem Services (ES) as a framework for thinking and working across disciplines to make better decisions in this country. The project will apply ES to contentious production landscape issues across Canada, including the Atlantic case study I’m co-leading with Jeremy Lundholm and Danika van Proosdij on the Bay of Fundy dykelands. We’ve got great partners, and a very active case as the NS Department of Agriculture is already deciding which dykelands can and should be sustained, and which realigned and/or restored to salt marsh. This project will allow us to wrap a research programme around that ongoing work, and leverage experts across the country. I look forward to the next 5+ years with this exceptional team.

Planning workshop at McGill

Hard at work while Andy Gonzalez and Marie-Josee Fortin talk monitoring.

Hard at work while Andy Gonzalez and Marie-Josee Fortin talk monitoring.

Cleared by surgeon to return to work last Monday. Left that afternoon for a two-day trip to Montreal for a workshop to plan a new NSERC project using ecosystem services to aid decision-making in production landscapes. Landscape and thematic teams from across the country joined with engaged partners from across the public and private sector, all inspired by the big vision and strong leadership of Prof Elena Bennett. Thrilled to be co-leading the Atlantic case study for this big new proposal, with such a great interdisciplinary team, and also enjoyed being the SSHRC devil’s advocate in the mix.

 

SSHRC team meetings all week

John Parkins, Carolyn Mann and Wes Tourangeau celebrate #Dal200 this week

John Parkins, Carolyn Mann and Wes Tourangeau celebrate #Dal200 this week in the Dalhousie ‘quad’

A real pleasure to have collaborators in town this week for meetings on several SSHRC-funded projects. Wednesday and Thursday we’ve been talking about what’s been achieved in the HM/sustainable grazing project 2.5 years in, and what we’ll do from here on in. John Parkins, co-applicant on that grant, has come from the University of Alberta, and Carolyn Mann, RA, from Ottawa. We’ve had collaborators Marney Isaac and Ed Bork skype in from Toronto and Edmonton, respectively. The whiteboard is no longer white, but laden with scrawled insight. Tomorrow we switch gears and talk energy.

New Mitacs-funded work with Ducks Unlimited Canada

Mhari Lamarque, Dalhousie MREM candidate, working for DUC at the Greenwing Centre at Shubenacadie, NS.

Mhari Lamarque, Dalhousie MREM candidate, working for DUC at the Greenwing Centre at Shubenacadie, NS.

SRES is a frequent flier with Mitacs, an NGO that links students who need experience with companies who need research. Our MREM and MES students often partner with Mitacs to match funds to support their internships and theses. We are thrilled now that Mitacs will also partner with environmental NGOs like Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC). DalNews published a nice article today about one such intern, Mhari Lamarque, who will be entering the final term of her MREM in the fall. She is working with me this summer, conducting research and developing program evaluation advice for DUC as her internship. The organization is looking to understand the value of their youth education programs and target new supporter groups without abandoning their traditional ones. Conservation organizations are often staffed by biologists rather than social scientists, so it’s a great opportunity to partner. The project winds up next week, and – as does any good research  – seems to suggest as many new research questions as wrap up old ones.

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