Kate Sherren

Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: social-ecological systems

Last ResNet AGM

April 26, 2025 /

Elson runs an icebreaker: which way is north, again?

Alex Legault and I grab a local Stukley beer at Jouvence, April 24, 2025

It was wonderful but also a little bittersweet to join with colleagues from the Bay of Fundy case study landscape (Danika, Brittney, Kiirsti and Alex) and from other landscape and theme teams nationally, for the last NSERC ResNet AGM. We again met at lovely Jouvence, near Orford in QC. Though we are heading into the project’s last year, there were still lots of students present and clearly plenty of scholarly work afoot. We spent a good bit of time looking at what we’ve accomplished as a group, but just as much time looking forward: how can we continue to leverage this work and these networks to make progress in achieving sustainable working landscapes in Canada? Our key messages were workshopped (“stress tested”) and many new research threads were shown as emerging from ResNet. Thanks to PI Elena Bennett for bringing us all together: to do this work in the first instance, and for this last opportunity to gather, celebrate and plot.

Lovely Lac Stukely was a mirror.

PECS working group meeting in Stellenbosch

June 19, 2023 /

Rafa Calderon captures a selfie of our evening stroll in Stellenbosch at the PECS working group meeting, June 2023.

I was delighted to represent NSERC ResNet at the first in-person PECS working group meeting since 2017 that was held over the first week in June in lovely Stellenbosch, South Africa. ResNet is the North American regional network of PECS, and my role was primarily to talk to PECS members about how ResNet is structured and what we are doing, and identify places of connection to individual working groups. I also was there to listen to people’s hopes for the 2024 PECS conference that is planned for Montreal next summer, which ResNet will be hosting. I spent most of my time connecting to the SES Methods and  Institutional modelling working groups, with a bit of discussion with the T4T. Thanks to Oonsie and Alta and their great team at Stellenbosch University for their generosity, and the lovely Devon Valley Hotel and Helena’s for such great food and hospitality.

Colourful Cape Town scenes.

In amidst the hard work, we were treated to a food tour of Cape Town, culminating in an amazing Cape Malay meal at the Biesmiellah Restaurant in colourful Bo-Kaap (see above, top right). If only we had been more hungry! Table Mountain remained elusive throughout, but I was struck by the scale of informal settlements we encountered. We also visited the impressive Blaauwberg Nature Reserve, a historic site of battles military and ecological. The latter is the battle against invasive Australian trees such as the wattle, which can be seen in the background of the image below (bottom left), to let the native ‘fynbos’ (or fine wood) vegetation to thrive. We heard from passionate ecologists and volunteers in persistent rainy-season weather. Later on, close to the hotel, I got to see some fynbos ecosystem with a mature protea overstory (bottom right). Before flying out I had a half-day in Stellenbosch proper, enjoying good coffee and melktert (milk tart), the botanic gardens at the university, and the Stellenbosch Village Museum, a mix between a re-enactment visit and a walking tour, with four houses restored and ‘animated’ to their period. Such museums always take me back to my teen years working at Kings Landing.

Native regeneration at Blaauwberg (left) and proteas at Stellenbosch (right).

Two papers in PECS collection

February 21, 2022 /

A special article collection in Ecosystems & People on “Ten Years of the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society” (i.e. PECS), features two papers that I have co-authored. The first, led by Elena Bennett, indomitable NSERC ResNet PI, came out back in December: Facing the challenges of using place-based social-ecological research to support ecosystem service governance at multiple scales. This paper uses the ResNet structure of landscape case studies (including our Bay of Fundy dykelands) and integrative themes as an opportunity to explore the challenges of knowledge integration we face, and how we are trying to tackle those. The second paper was led by a close colleague since my time at ANU, Joern Fischer, and just came out this week: Using a leverage points perspective to compare social-ecological systems: a case study on rural landscapes. This one uses the leverage points framework to generalize insights across three large-scale social-ecological studies on which Joern has been a or the lead in Australia, Romania and Ethiopia. I love working with these big-thinking ecologists, especially when the modes of synthesis are as transparent and low tech as demonstrated in these papers, rather than massively complex computer models.

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