From left to right, Anna, Chris, Elson, Robin, Keahna, Jessica, Lindsay, Bethany, me and Alex (missing: Emma and Emily)
Welcome to a new year! A frantic one, so far, but looking forward to a rich and productive one.
Tag: What I’m doing (Page 1 of 22)
From left to right, Nathan Ayer (chair), me (supervisor), Eric Nost (committee member), Athena Iraji (student) and Sandra Toze (examiner), after the defense.
Yesterday, Athena Iraji successfully defended her MES thesis, Coastal Development Patterns and Regulatory Trajectories: Analyzing Building Trends in Nova Scotia using Open Government Data. Thanks to the whole examining committee (above) for the great conversation. It was just the kind of engaged and constructive discussion a supervisor hopes for in a defense. Athena’s next step is on to the University of Guelph to work with her committee member on this work, Dr. Eric Nost. Congratulations!
IASNR Canada conference attendees (minus John Parkins, organizer, who is taking the picture)
It was great spending the end of last week at the IASNR Canada Hub meeting in lovely Camrose, Alberta, organized by my long-time collaborator John Parkins, who is Dean of the Augustana Campus of the University Alberta. It was our first opportunity to meet formally as an IASNR Hub, before the main IASNR meeting in Oregon. It was lovely to be bombing around the township and range grid of Alberta after a few decades, with green fields and happy livestock thanks to recent rains. I ran a workshop on social science data infrastructure and policy, and presented on new results about climax thinking. The field trips to the Hesje Observatory in lovely Miquelon Lake Provincial Park and to the Driedmeat Lake reservoir and catchment were memorable (and not only for the very late night and the mosquitoes, respectively). The rest of this post is just photos, because I don’t have a lot of time to post today.
Fieldtripping
At the observatory
Requiem for a town
Alberta energy landscape
Rail at golden hour
Finally, I was also really happy to have been able to see some of our Bay of Fundy research sites enroute to Alberta, thanks to clear conditions.
The Belcher Street managed dyke realignment
The Avon River causeway
Grand Pre and Cape Blomidon
Me, Shannon, Rachael, Nicolas and Patricia ‘paneling’ for the McCall MacBain scholars.
Two weeks ago the McGill McCall MacBain scholars were on a site visit to Halifax, and invited me to join a panel at the Halifax Public Library called Rising Seas & Coastal Futures: Community-led Strategies, Impacts and Adaptation. It was a great line-up, with Shannon Fernandes from Halifax Regional Municipality, Nicolas Winkler from the Ecology Action Centre and Rachael Cadman from the Marine Affairs Program, all ably chaired by retired Dal Planning Professor Patricia Manuel. It was like a chat amongst old friends, and the students asked wonderful questions. Great to see ResNet HQP Siena Margorian amongst the McCall MacBain fellows (she is one of those thanking us above)!
Day 1 of the TranSECT workshops.
I spent Monday and Tuesday this week in workshops with my colleagues in the Transforming Climate Action TranSECT project. Overlooking the new blue whale skeleton in the Beaty Centre for Marine Biodiversity, we talked about nature-based solutions, dykeland futures, risk governance and citizen science, with an eye toward policy impact. The conversations were particularly enriched by the UQAR colleagues who made the trip from Rimouski for the event, Guillaume Marie, Pascal Bernatchez and Antoine Police. Particular thanks also to the expert discussants–Danika van Proosdij, Tony Bowron and Nancy Anningson–who joined us for the dykeland session from the ‘other TCA’, TransCoastal Adaptations Centre for Nature-based Solutions, to talk about their experience with managed dyke realignment in the province. A final thanks to all the HQP who helped out, working as organizers, note-takers, presenters, etc. Great to see this team in action, and make some concrete progress toward our milestones.
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