School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

FY 2019 Annual Report

(May 2019 – April 2020)

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FY 2019 Report from the School of Environment, Resources & Sustainability for the

FENV General Assembly May 14, 2020

During Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 (i.e., May 2019- April 2020 comprising the Spring 2019, Fall

2019 and Winter 2020 Terms) SERS faculty taught 41 undergraduate courses with a total

enrollment of 2301 students. In Fall 2019 we took in 112 new first year students and

between June and October convocations, we graduated 66 students. The total number of

active undergraduate students in SERS during our most recent completed term, Winter

2020, was 389 including 115 Honours students and 274 Honours Co-op students.

In addition, 10 graduate courses were taught with a total enrollment of 82 students. In fall

2019 we admitted 7 new PhD students and 12 Masters students. Fifteen students

graduated with 5 PhDs and 10 MESs. Already we have admitted 5 new PhD students and 11

new Masters Students for Fall 2020. In total SERS has 65 PhD students and 35 MES

students who are active currently.

Some Student highlights for FY 2019:

2019 SSHRC awardees (4): Lowine Hill, Anita Lazurko, Erin Mills and Phoebe Stephens

2019 OGS Awardees (6): Barb Davy, Matt Dyson, Elaine Ho, Dorian Pomezanski, Sara Wickham

2019 Davis Memorial Scholarship in Ecology (2): Jessica Turecek and Ana Dias

Lauren Smith (PhD student) featured in Globe & Mail Special Research & Innovation Section along

with GEM student Nicole Balliston.

SERS PhD students Madu Galappaththi and Lauren Smith receive UW Gender Equity Research

Grants.

Sondra Eger received a James M. Flaherty Research Scholarship allowing her to spend time in in the

research group of Dr. Wesley Flannery, School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University

in Belfast

Elaine Ho won the “Our water – our life – the most valuable resource” student award at the 2019

Canadian Water Resources Association national conference

Claim Kemp receives the first SERS Good Citizen Award.

2020 Trudeau Awardee – Anita Lazurko

2020 Vanier Awardee – Lauren Smith

SERS continued to play important leadership roles in the University of Waterloo's

Collaborative Water Program. Rob de Loë completed his term as Director of the program

on December 31, 2019, while Simon Courtenay once again co-lead the capstone WATER

602 course.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic sent us all to work from home beginning the week of

March 16, 2020, this FY had seen its share of changes. In Fall 2019, Sarah Wolfe headed to

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Royal Roads University in Victoria BC for a year’s leave to explore new opportunities

including collaborations between RRU and UW-SERS. We miss Sarah in so many ways

including the amazing work she was doing as our Associate Director for Undergraduate

Studies. Many thanks to Steve Murphy for stepping in to keep things moving in that role.

As well, in November 2019 we learned that Ian Rowlands has been reappointed to a three-

year term as Associate Vice-President International starting in January 2021. This is great

news for UW and the Office of Research, on whom we all depend, but we regret that we

will not be seeing Ian back in SERS any time soon. Happier news was that Trevor

Swerdfager joined us in January – or rather rejoined us after a hiatus of 35 years. As Trevor

hints at on his page following, he is bringing the Faculty and our School all kinds of new

directions that we really need. As well, we greatly benefited from the presence over the

past year of visiting researcher and expert in corporate social responsibility (CSR), Professor

Alberto Fonseca from the Federal University of Ouro Preto in Brazil. And to finish with

more great news, 2019 saw Maren Oelberman promoted to Professor and Christy Barbeau

and James Nugent both become permanent Continuing Lecturers within SERS and ENV.

Highlights from the efforts of our faculty members and students follow.

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Andrea Collins:

Associate Editor, Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

Completed draft of first book, Laws of the Land: Gender and Global Land Governance, now under review at McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Delivered an invited research presentation at The Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland in November 2019.

Accepted to present two conference papers from two ongoing projects at the International Studies Association Annual Conference in Hawaii, March 2020 (Cancelled due to COVID-19).

Successful MES Thesis Defense by Sarah-Louise Ruder in August 2019, who is now pursuing a PhD at UBC.

SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Jennifer Vansteenkiste, travelled to Haiti for CIHR-funded project “Gendering Integrated Knowledge Translation: Food Security and Gender Equity in Haiti.” Dr. Vansteenkiste developed a collaborative participatory research program with the Université d’État d’Haiti – Limonade (UEH-L) and nearly two dozen local stakeholders.

Co-Investigator on SSHRC Partnership Grant, “Vulnerability to Viability (V2V): Global Partnership for Building Strong Small-Scale Fisheries Communities,” (PI: Prateep Nayak), 100% funded in April 2020 ($7.3 million).

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Andrew Trant

New projects: Andrew is co-leading a SESYNC (the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre) Pursuit that focuses on how historical ecological data can be used to better manage ecosystems! Andrew is a co-applicant on a funded SSHRC partnership grant called, ‘Environments of Change: Digitizing Nature, History, and Human Experience in Late Medieval Sussex’. He gets to spend time in a castle doing ‘research’. Along with Master’s student, Alexandra Johnson, Andrew was started a new project in Northern Labrador with Parks Canada and the Nunatsiavut Government on reconstructing historical caribou populations in Labrador. Publications It has been an exciting year for getting Andrew’s research out: Over the year, Andrew published papers in Nature Communications, People and Nature, Journal of Biogeography, Global Ecology and Biogeography and Ecological Indicators. The lab

The Ecological Legacy Lab keeps growing, now with 2 postdocs, 3 PhD students, 2 Master’s students (one not shown in the below picture) and 3 honours students (past and present)!! This year, Andrew had a new postdoc receive a Garfield Weston Postdoctoral Fellowship (Emma Davis), a PhD student receive an NSERC CGS-D (Sara Wickham), a Master’s student receive an NSERC CSG-M (Alexandra Johnson), and an undergrad student receive an NSERC URSA (Taylor Larking).

Andrew also ran his second annual lab retreat on the Bruce Peninsula where so much amazing science and team-building happened!

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Bob Gibson:

• June 2019: federal government passes an Impact Assessment Act that requires evaluation of whether assessed projects make a contribution to sustainability

o tenuous sense of accomplishment after 30 years of nudging, with scores of colleagues, two generations of advanced assessment grad and undergraduate students, many research grants, two books, a small pile of academic papers, and a much bigger heap of technical reports, formal submissions, consultancies, advisory committees and court/inquiry/parliamentary testimony

• August 2019: federal government proclaimed the Impact Assessment Act is in force and releases initial regulatory direction and policy guidance on implementation, most of which ranges from disappointing to appalling

o back to the trenches

September 2019: SSHRC and Impact Assessment Agency (IAAC) grant our team funding for a project on the far leading edge of assessment: doing sustainability-based regional assessments in collaboration with Indigenous authorities a welcome but puzzling decision, since they must know that they will not want to act on the resulting recommendations

November 2019: at a small IAAC workshop on how to do strategic-level assessments under the new law, most of the outside experts are long-time colleagues and past grad students; the most senior Agency official took my advanced assessment course in the 1990s

o sustainability is a multi-generational adventure

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Brad Fedy:

Research in the Fedy Lab of Wildlife and Molecular Ecology maintained its upward trajectory throughout 2019.

We continued our long-term field work in sagebrush ecosystems in northeastern Wyoming successfully tagging and tracking sage-grouse and conducting avian surveys in a major oil and gas reclamation area.

Research also continued in the western boreal forest of Alberta and we deployed novel telemetry receivers on > 20 Mallard hens to study habitat selection and movement ecology in response to landscape features.

We began a substantial new project in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada examining the relationships among sand hill cranes and agricultural practices throughout Ontario and Quebec.

We had another successful funding year with >$500,000 CAD in new funding across our research projects.

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Brendon Larson:

The ADUG role takes the majority of my time; my report will be posted at https://uwaterloo.ca/environment/about-environment/strategy-and-progress/annual-reports

In Winter 2020, co-taught the Global Engagement Seminar (ARTS490) on “The Future of Nature” with Angela Carter (Dept. Political Science) and Fellows Edward Burtynsky and Mike Davis

Domain editor for “Climate, Ecology and Conservation,” WIREs Climate Change

Co-edited special issues (18 papers) on “The Human and Social Dimensions of Invasion Science and Management” in Journal of Environmental Management (2019)

UW/SSHRC Explore and Exchange Grants (2019)

Outstanding Performance Award (2019)

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Christy Barbeau:

2019 saw the first successful full-year offering, of the online version of ERS 215:

Environment and Sustainability Assessment I. The course saw over 500 students enrolled

throughout the year – drawing from numerous faculties across campus

During the Spring Term, I instructed two field courses. These courses focused on

experiential learning, including Ontario Benthic Monitoring Training, Vegetation

Sampling Protocol, wilderness survival and Indigenous training, and long-term forest

monitoring with the MNRF at the Hope Bay Nature Reserve

Throughout the year, I have continued to focus on developing my teaching skills by

attending many CTE workshops, including the Instructional Skills Workshop, the

University of Waterloo Teaching Squares Program and becoming part of the

Contemplative Pedagogy Community of Practice at the University of Waterloo

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Dan McCarthy: Dan has several inter-related community-based projects that kept him busy from May 2019-April 2020: Co-reclamation in the Oil Sands This is the first year of a 5-year, funded project that is a collaboration between the Fort McKay First Nation, Suncor Energy Company and Universities of Waterloo and Calgary. The intent of the project is to transform, and begin the process of healing, the relationship between the Fort McKay First Nation and the Suncor Energy Company around reclamation while attempting to heal the land. The first phase is to re-establish relationships and engage the community in a respectful, relevant, reciprocal and responsible manner. As with any process of reconciliation, this a challenging but rewarding journey. The challenge has been intensified given the new context of COVID-19 and we are all committed to find meaningful ways of keeping this project going.

Reconciliation, Education and Research on Haida Gwaii This SSHRC-funded project in collaboration with the Haida Gwaii Institute and the Haida Gwaii Museum and the Universities of Waterloo, British Columbia, Lethbridge and Alberta. This research aims to explore, support, and inform a precedent setting intercultural social innovation through an Indigenous research collaboration in one of Canada’s most renowned reconciliation contexts - Haida Gwaii. Social innovations are initiatives that challenge and change the defining social structures of broader social systems. For the purposes of this research, we consider intercultural social innovations to be grounded in a shared responsibility to reciprocally and respectfully navigate the evolving landscape of reconciliation in Canada. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, we have been able to maintain contact with our project partners and been able to make good progress.

Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) Incubating the Turtle Island Institute WISIR has been incubating an Indigenous-led social innovation think-and-do-tank which has now been established as Turtle Island Institute (TII), an independent entity on the TIDES Platform. TII has received over $3 million dollars in support, mainly from the Suncor Energy Foundation and the J.W. McConnell Foundation as well as other funders such as the MasterCard Foundation. TII has been active in the development of its business plan as well as further development of tools and pedagogy for helping to foster Indigenous-led Social Innovation across Canada. New efforts have been initiated to take some of this material online as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Transformation in the Food and Agriculture Systems in Southern Ontario: Oak Ridges Institute for Applied Sustainability (ORIAS) and Mount Wolfe Farm This project has been developed in collaboration with the owners of Mount Wolfe Farm, the Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM) Coalition and the University of Waterloo and Queen’s University to explore transformations in the food and agriculture system of southern Ontario in the context of the land use and conservation planning context in the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Part of this work is to explore the development of the ORIAS as a vehicle for cross-scalar innovations or transformations. This work continues virtually in the context of COVID-19.

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Derek Armitage: I’ve maintained productive collaborations with a wide range of great colleagues, graduate students and research partners through several SSHRC-funded research grants. I am also now collaborating with Dan McCarthy and other colleagues to further develop on-going initiatives in Haida Gwaii, and with Prateep Nayak (P-I), I’ll be helping to roll out a new SSHRC Partnership Grant on the vulnerability and viability of small-scale fisheries. It’s been a very productive year for the graduate students I am fortunate to supervise or co-supervise with numerous defenses completed, awards and scholarships earned, and impressive publications generated. I have co-authored a number of papers and/or delivered a number of talks based on research collaborations. A few highlights: (1) a keynote talk at the IMBeR Ocean Science Meeting on Future Oceans and Coasts in Brest, France; (2) a paper co-authored with the graduate students in our core grad course on their experiences applying a 'Theory of Change' process to facilitate transdisciplinary sustainability education (in Ecology and Society); (3) a paper in BioScience on integrating governance ideas in modelling processes and quantitative management evaluation tools, that also lead to a ‘BioScience Talks’ podcast; and (4) a paper with colleagues and grad students from South Africa on governance principles for community-centred conservation that led to a recent “The Conversation” article on ‘why communities must be at the heart of conserving wildlife, plants and ecosystems’. I continue to serve on several oversight panels / advisory boards including the Independent Science Panel for the 'Sustainable Seas' Grand Challenge in New Zealand, as well as for Science for Nature and People Partnerships (SNAPP) on climate resilience and marine fisheries, and on social-ecological outcomes of other-effective area based measures (OECBMs) in marine spaces.

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Ian Rowlands:

During 2019-2020, while not based in SERS, I continued to supervise graduate students, to

serve on other graduate students’ committees, and to engage in other activities in the School

(and the Faculty).

With my colleague Prof. Bala Venkatesh (Ryerson University) – the Network Director of the

NSERC Energy Storage Technology Network – I continued lead activities to internationalize this

Network. One key activity was a mission to the Clean Energy Ministerial and Mission

Innovation Ministerial in Vancouver, BC, in June 2019.

I participated in an International Workshop on Climate Resilience, hosted by the University of

the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, in July 2019.

I was a faculty member delegate as part of the University of Waterloo’s participation in the

25th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention in Madrid, Spain, in

December 2019.

From May to December 2019, I continued as Associate Vice-President, International at the

University of Waterloo. It was announced, in November 2019, that I was reappointed to a

three-year term in this role, starting January 2021.

In 2020, I am on sabbatical. During this period, I have been connected with the Association of

Commonwealth Universities (ACU), collaborating with them on a range of common interests:

climate resilience, the future of higher education, international university networks, the

Sustainable Development Goals, sustainable urbanization, and the UN’s annual Climate

Change Conference. Planning to spend the entire year in the UK, I returned to Canada

(because of the pandemic) in late March, but I continue to work remotely with the ACU.

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James Nugent:

PI for an UW ExL Institute Grant that is helping (re)launch a “living labs” initiative aimed at strengthening the links between campus sustainability and experiential. A new web-based portal will help connect students to campus operations, clubs, organizations and course projects that encourage a hands-on approach to realizing sustainability starting right here at the University of Waterloo. This work will help SERS develop a new experiential learning course centred on campus sustainability.

Helped launch the Diploma in Sustainability. First offering of ENVS205 Sustainability: The Future We Want centred on approaches for realizing the SDGs.

2019 Federal election – helped organized all-candidates’ debate on campus; hosted official national TV debate viewing session on campus to help improve youth engagement in the election.

Invited guest speaker at several student conferences (e.g., Sustainable Campus Initiative Earth Day; Global Solutions Conference; Youth Action on Climate Change; ECOLOO; etc.)

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Jennifer Clapp:

2018-2019 was a busy year! Here are some highlights:

Three of my graduate students successfully defended their theses: Matt Gaudreau (PhD), Beth Timmers (PhD), and Sarah Louise Ruder (MES).

I gave the opening keynote speaker at the European Society for Rural Sociology conference, Trondheim, Norway, on the theme of: “The Rise of Mega-companies in the Global Food System: Implications for Justice and Sustainability.”

Sabbatical started on July 1, and I drove across Canada to spend the fall term as a visiting fellow at the Peter Wall Institute, UBC. The trip was amazing and I took a ton of photos.

I received a SSHRC Insight Grant for the project “The Rise of Agrifood Mega-Companies: Drivers, Implications and Political Responses”, which I am really excited about.

I was appointed as a member of the Steering Committee of the UN Committee on World Food Security High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) and am already deeply engaged in the work of the committee.

I was selected to participate in a month-long Rockefeller Foundation academic writing residency, Bellagio, Italy, and am glad I was able to be there for the month of November, prior to the outbreak of COVID19.

I have been busy with research and writing and webinar speaking on the impact of COVID19 on food security.

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Maren Oelbermann: (Associate Director for Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research)

Associate Director Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research

Associate Editor Agroforestry Systems

Scientific committee World Agroforestry Congress, Montpellier, France (May 2019)

Scientific committee Bio-Char II: Production, Characterization and Applications, Cetraro, Italy

(September 2019)

Associate Editor special issue on Agroforestry and Climate Change in the journal Agriculture,

Ecosystems and Environment

Associate Editor special issue on Biochar Amendments for Sustainable Agriculture in the journal

Canadian Society of Soil Science

Session organizer and convener on Biochar-its Impact on Soil and Crops in Agriculture for the

forthcoming annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Soil Science June 2020 (cancelled due to

COVID-19)

Completion of a FactSheet for the general public and relevant stakeholders on Biochar and its use

in Soil-Lessons from Temperate Agriculture

5 papers published plus an invited review paper (currently in review) on a special issue

(Tomorrow’s Earth special series) in the journal Science

Invitation to participate in the development of the Boreal & Arctic Agricultural Research Network

Hosted international undergraduate and graduate students from Tunisia (Ons Kammarti), France

(Solveine Liminana) and Argentina (Nadia Gabbanelli)

Hosted post doctoral fellow Dr. N. Chaganti from July 2019 to April 2020

Began a new research project investigating greenhouse gas emissions and soil carbon dynamics in

perennial bioenergy crops on marginal land in southern Canada

Invited to present our latest research on the impact of bio based residues on soil health and

greenhouse gas emissions at the Annual meeting of the Certified Crop Advisor, London, ON

(January 2020)

Knowledge mobilization of my research on biochar and biobased residues via interviews (Ontario

Farmer, Certified Crop Advisor, Top Crop Manager)

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Rob de Loë:

Rob de Loë completed his term as Director of the University of Waterloo's Collaborative Water Program on December 31, 2019

Rob de Loë completed his second term on December 31, 2019 as Canadian Co-Chair of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board, a bi-national body that advises the International Joint Commission and the Parties to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Canada and the US) on their responsibilities under the Agreement.

Undergraduate students from across the Faculty of Environment came together in ERS 318 Photography for Sustainability in Fall, 2019, to develop projects reflecting the diverse interests shared among Faculty of Environment students.

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Sarah Wolfe:

My UW doctoral student, Lauren Smith, received a Vanier Scholarship ($50K x three years) and

Presidents Graduate Scholarship ($15K x three years) My RRU doctoral student, Stephanie Shouldice, received the RRU Entrance Award of ($20K) and the

Canadian Federation of Canadian Women scholarship ($5K) Research Funding: 2019 “Stronger than fear: awe, ritual, identity and water decisions”, $72 274; SSHRC Insight

Development Grant (PI; 98% funded). Summary: my proposed research challenges the conventional explanation that more information will be sufficient to change people’s water use behaviours. My earlier mortality fear research has shown why the conventional water approaches (regulations, incentives, education) aren't working as well as they must. To change our entrenched water behaviours we need something more powerful than fear. I propose four sub-hypotheses: (1) a ‘powerful something’ could be awe; (2) A sense of awe could be sparked by ritual; (3) Accepted and sustained ritual would need to be contextualized and supported by environmental identities; and (4) robust identities could be generated through aspects of a conversion processes. 2019 “Dead in the Entrepreneurial Water: Is gender bias activated by mortality messages in water

CleanTech pitches?” $10 000; HeforShe Gender Equity Research Grants (PI; 100% funded). Editorial Boards: Editorial Board Member for the Water International, International Water Resources Association. Invited May 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=editorialBoard&journalCode=rwin20 (As an aside, I’ve asked repeatedly for them to list me as both UW and RRU but the site hasn’t been updated yet). Refeed Journal Articles: Smith**, Lauren K. M., Jennifer K. Lynes, and S. E. Wolfe (2019). Community-Based Social Marketing—

Creating Lasting, Sustainable, Environmental Change: Case Study of a Household Stormwater Management Program in the Region of Waterloo, Ontario. Social Marketing Quarterly, 25(4), 308–326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524500419883288

Knowledge Mobilization: Wolfe, S.E. (2020). “To understand coronavirus transmission, we have to understand our wastewater.”

Globe and Mail. March 21, 2020. Opinion: print and https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-to-understand-covid-19-transmission-we-have-to-understand-our/

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Hodson, J. and S.E. Wolfe (2020). “Stockpiling Bottled Water? Maybe Social Media is To Blame” Opinion post to https://one.aom.org/covid-19-insights-from-business-sustainability-scholars; http://www.gronenonline.com/_gronen1/covid-19-forum/; https://corporate-sustainability.org/covid-19-insights-from-business-sustainability/; https://rrbm.network/tag/covid-19/; https://www.nbs.net/articles/covid-19-insights-from-business-sustainability-scholars; https://sim.aom.org/covid-19-insights

Wolfe, S.E. (2019). “Flush your disgust. We can’t let emotions dampen our water policies.” Globe and

Mail. March 22, 2019 (World Water Day) Opinion: print and https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-flush-your-disgust-we-cant-let-emotions-dampen-our-water-policies/

Media Commentary on my research:

April 29th, 2019: coverage by John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail re flooding, climate change and behavior https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-floods-push-conservatives-to-agree-on-need-to-fight-global-warming/

TMT and bottled water. One-week impact numbers: https://impact.meltwater.com/reports/v35TEIL8TakP

and coverage online, print, radio for example, CBC Marketplace (radio); CTV (video); Kitchener-Waterloo Record (print) https://www.therecord.com/news-story/8105847-bottled-water-ads-tap-into-human-desire-for-immortality-uw-study/; and various online sites such as

o Motherboard: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xw58dd/how-advertising-convinces-us-to-buy-bottled-water-nestle-evian;

o Science Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180201085749.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate%2Fwater+%28Water+Conservation+News+--+ScienceDaily%29 and

o Research2Reality: https://research2reality.com/science-society/the-fountain-of-youth-in-a-plastic-bottle/?hilite=Sarah+Wolfe

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Courtenay lab:

2019 was Simon’s first full year as Director of SERS. Many thanks to former Director, and this year A/D-UG, Steve Murphy, A/D-G Derek, Jenn N., Amanda and Patti for showing me the ropes and to the whole SERS community and Dean’s Office for being so patient and supportive as I fumbled through. This year ended my term as Chair of the Fellows’ Board of the Canadian Rivers Institute and I took on an assignment with the journal Fisheries Research as guest editor for a special issue on impacts of seismic surveys, run by the offshore oil and gas industry, on the lucrative snow crab fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador. Hellos: Mark McCarthy began his MES, Jerrica Cormier began her MSc (co-supervised with Mike van den Heuvel at UPEI-Biology), Natalie Mechalko began her BES honours thesis, Mark Saunders began his MES (co-supervised with Mike van den Heuvel), Lilia Schoot Uiterkamp began an MRP within her Masters of Climate Change program and Elaine introduced SERS newest recruit: Cosmo! Farewells: Nicole Stamnes and Matt Cowley each graduated with a shiny new MES and secured great jobs with DFO, for personal reasons Ashraf Nadeem sadly had to withdraw from his PhD program and return home to Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Science in Pakistan where he works as a lecturer in Marine Sciences, Mike Coffin defended his PhD (co-supervised with Mike van den Heuvel at UPEI-Biology) and secured a job with DFO, Zachary Sirahahenda defended his PhD and returned home to a university position in Burundi (co-supervised with André St-Hilaire and Mike van den Heuvel at l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique, INRS- Université de Recherche - Centre Eau, Terre et Environnement, Québec) and Christine Nielsen completed her BSc honours thesis (co-supervised with Mark Servos in Biology) and will begin a Masters at University of Toronto. 2019 publications and why they’re cool (to me): Brueckner-Irwin, I., D. Armitage and S. Courtenay. 2019. Applying a social-ecological well-being approach

to enhance opportunities for marine protected area governance. Ecology and Society 24 (3):7. [online] URL: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss3/art7/. This is my first real social

sciences publication! Irene shows how the acceptance of MPAs in the Bay of Fundy has depended on fishermens’ perception of threats to their livelihoods and how acceptance can benefit from improved collaborative and governance processes. Many thanks to Irene and her MES supervisor Derek for inviting me to serve on Irene’s committee.

Hanson, J.M. and S.C. Courtenay. 2020. Data recovery from old filing cabinets: Seasonal diets of the most common demersal fishes in the Miramichi River Estuary (Canada), 1991-1993. Northeastern Naturalist. In press. This is the last publication of my friend and colleague Mark Hanson who has just

retired from DFO Gulf Fisheries Centre after 30 very productive years as a research scientist. It reports some work we did together at the beginnings of our careers there.

Pearson, J.M.N., J.A. Kidd, K.M. Knysh, M. R. van den Heuvel, J.-M. Gagnon and S.C Courtenay. 2019. Identification of native and non-native grass shrimps Palaemon spp. (Decapoda: Palaemonidae) by citizen science monitoring programs in Atlantic Canada. Journal of Crustacean Biology. 39(2): 189-192 https://doi.org/10.1093/jcbiol/ruy116 This is a wonderful student-led collaboration. Doctoral

student Kyle Knysh (UPEI-Biology) posed a hypothesis that the grass shrimp we report in DFO’s Community Aquatic Monitoring Program (CAMP) is actually more than one species. MSc student Jess Kidd (UW-Biology) collected samples during her Masters fieldwork. Jessie Pearson (SERS Honours student) analyzed the samples here at UW and confirmed that Kyle was right; there are two species, one of which is invasive.

Sirabahenda, Z., A. St-Hilaire, S.C. Courtenay and M. R. van den Heuvel. 2019. Comparison of acoustic to

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optical backscatter continuous measurements of suspended sediment concentrations and their characterization in an agriculturally impacted river. Water 2019 11(5), 981; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050981 Sediments getting into estuaries from farmers’ fields are a big

problem in PEI. As part of his PhD work with our Northumberland Strait – Environmental Monitoring Partnership (NorSt-EMP) Zachary showed that sound-based Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP) can provide comparable, and in some ways better, monitoring data than the more commonly used optical nephelometers.

van den Heuvel, M.R., J. K. Hitchock, M.R.S. Coffin, C.C. Pater and S.C. Courtenay. 2019. Inorganic nitrogen has a dominant impact on estuarine eelgrass distribution in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada. Limnology and Oceanography. 64, 2019, 2313-2327. doi: 10.1002/lno.11185

Eelgrass loss from the coastal environment is a big concern for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. MSc student Jesse Hitchcock (UPEI-Biology) showed that excess nitrogen, largely originating from agricultural fertilizers, is the most significant factor to be addressed by environmental managers.

Sandra Cooke presents Elaine Ho with the “Our water – our life – the most valuable resource” student award at the 2019 Canadian Water Resources Association national conference for

Mark McCarthy discusses his research plans with Mark Servos and Elaine Ho at a Water Managers’ meeting at Grand River Conservation Authority headquarters 9 Oct 2019

her paper titled Collaborative Approaches for Redefining Aquatic Monitoring: a Case Study in Grand River Watershed, ON. 28 May 2019

Christine Nielsen presents her honours research at the Women in Science Undergraduate Research Symposium in the UW Science Teaching Complex Atrium 3 March 2020

Sondra Eger (Left) with a Queen’s University Belfast colleague and a new MSP book (with a collaborative chapter by host research group). Sondra spent time in the research group of Dr. Wesley Flannery, School of Natural and Built Environment in Belfast through a James M. Flaherty Research Scholarship.

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Steve Murphy: (Conservation and Restoration Ecology Group)

Highlights in 2019 include:

Organization and delivery of a meeting on the future of restoration ecology sponsored by the Royal

Society (London, UK)

Leadership in helping foster the United Nations Declaration that 2020-2030 is the Decade on

Ecosystem Restoration

Leadership of the flagship journal Restoration Ecology; it now is in the top 20% of all 300+ ecology

journals worldwide

Leadership in organizing 7 other international conferences in restoration, conservation, socioecological

systems analysis, and parks and protected areas management

The group’s 22 graduate students, 11 undergraduate students, and 2 post docs/research associates

completed 45 research projects focused on socioecological systems restoration and conservation,

obtained or continued over $7 million in research, presented 27 papers at 11 conferences and

published 10 peer reviewed articles (Michael McTavish, who recently completed his PhD, was

responsible for half of these). There are another 8 in review.

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Steve Quilley: On Sabbatical

Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, I moved with my family to the UK with a view to doing interviews for a SSHRC-funded project on traditional music, social capital formation and resilient community. I managed to 20 interviews before the lock down hit.

Secured $6k Mitacs grant for Ph.D. student Anna Beresford to spend 6 months in Shetland, working on the SSHRC project on traditional music, social capital formation and resilient community

Have begun a long-term collaboration with a group of ‘post-liberal’ academics and writers associated with the online magazine Unherd. Invited to contribute to a book alongside philosopher John Gray and other high-profile political philosophers and theologians. The topic will be post-liberalism and the political economy of localism.

Wrote many sustained entries for my blog www.navigatorsoftheanthropocene.com

Hauled the kids in to play a few sets at Envigorate 2019 festival

Books

Loyal, S. and S. Quilley, (2018). State Power and Asylum Seekers in Ireland (New York: Springer)

Zywert, K. and Quilley, S. (Eds) (2019) Health in the Anthropocene: Living well on a finite planet (Toronto University Press) (In press)

Chapters

Quilley, S and Zywert, K. (2019) ‘Livelihood, market and state: What does a political economy predicated on the ‘individual-in-group-in-place’ actually look like?’ in the 30th anniversary issue of Ecological Economics on the future of the discipline Ed. Kish, K. and Farley, J.

Quilley, S (2019) ‘Liberty in the Near Anthropocene: State, Market and Livelihood. What the changing I/We balance means for feminism, nationalism, liberalism, socialism and conservatism’ in in Liberty and the Ecological Crisis Freedom on a Finite Planet, Edited by Christopher J. Orr, Kaitlin Kish, Bruce Jennings (London Routledge)

Quilley, S (2019) ‘Liberty in the (Long) Anthropocene: The ‘I’ and the ‘We’ in the Longue Duree ‘ in Liberty and the Ecological Crisis Freedom on a Finite Planet, 1st Edition Edited by Christopher J. Orr, Kaitlin Kish, Bruce Jennings (London Routledge)

Peer-reviewed articles

Quilley, S. (2020, forthcoming). Elias in the Anthropocene: Human Nature, Evolution and the Politics of Great Acceleration. In J. C. Pereira & A. Saramago (Eds.), Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Steven Loyal and Stephen Quilley (2020) State Formation, Habitus, and National Character:

Elias, Bourdieu, Polanyi, and Gellner and the Case of Asylum Seekers in Ireland Historical Social

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Research 45 (2020) x, x-xx published by GESIS DOI: 10.12759/hsr.45.2020.x.x-xx

Kish, K. and Quilley, S. (2019). ‘Livelihood and the Individual: New Ecological Economic Development Goals’. In: BSIA-10: Reflections on the Sustainable Development Goals. By: Dalby, S. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, ON.

Kish, K. and Quilley, S. (2019). Labour and Regenerative Production. In: A Research Agenda for Ecological Economics. By: Costanza, B., Farley, J., and Kubiszewski, I. Edward Elgar: New York, NY.

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Trevor Swerdfager:

SERS was also pleased to welcome a new faculty member this term. Trevor Swerdfager has joined SERS on a two and a half year appointment after a 30-year career in the federal Public Service including senior executive roles with Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans and Parks Canada. In a way he is actually “re-joining: SERS as he graduated from its forerunner program in 1985! He is teaching three courses in the Faculty, a grad level course dealing with fish, forests and wildlife conservation, a third year course dealing with federal environmental decision making and a second year survey course on the Future of our Ocean. More generally, Trevor is also working with the Dean and the University leadership community regarding the development of a number of broader strategic academic partnerships.

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A big shout out to our staff in SERS – Jennifer Nicholson, Patti Bester, and Amanda Campbell.

Jennifer completed the Sustainability Certificate in winter term and continues to contribute to SERS with her financial expertise and administrative guidance.

Patti, Undergraduate Program Advisor, continues to be our anchor, voice of reason and provides corporate memory for our SERS undergraduate program while providing excellent support to our students.

Graduate Coordinator Amanda contributed enormously to bringing us together in SERS through Monday morning SERS Salons at which staff, faculty and students share recent news and accomplishments. She continues to provide excellent support and guidance to our graduate students.

To our Adjuncts, Sessional Lecturers, Alumni and Students, we thank you all for your contributions and

for keeping us posted on your accomplishments.

Particular thanks are due to Grad Student Reps:

Matt Dyson, Nicole Davy, Emily Mann and Ella Kari and

Undergraduate Reps:

Hashveenah Manoharan and Liya Murray.

It is amazing to see SERS people from ages 18 to 88 doing so many great things to help make our

environment more sustainable.

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