SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPES FOR THE FUTURE

Our mission is to develop method and tools to assess landscape sustainability around the world that take issues of scale and teleconnections into account, and to do research that improves our ability to manage landscapes for a transition to a more sustainable local and global future. Through a variety of means, we foster multi-disciplinary research to expand McGill’s research strengths and community working in this area.

Our vision is a thriving, multi-disciplinary community of scholars at McGill engaged in collaborative projects to build tools that help manage landscapes for sustainability, informing real-world policy objectives through action-oriented research. To achieve this vision, we provide opportunities for McGill researchers from multiple disciplines to engage in multi-disciplinary research on landscape sustainability.

To achieve this vision, we provide opportunities for McGill researchers from multiple disciplines to engage in multi-disciplinary research on landscape sustainability. To do this, we:

• Fund empirically driven research that links theory, policy, and practice
• Use workshops and seminars to create a transdisciplinary community that can address and answer critical questions about landscape sustainability
• Train the next generation of leaders in landscape sustainability science
• Share knowledge generated through scientific publications, policy memos, and scientific and public presentations
• Build tools and knowledge for co-production of research with relevant stakeholders

The core team advances sustainability science through research projects on landscape sustainability, including northern landscapes. We bring together researchers across social and natural sciences to engage in a variety of novel and high reward projects. Numerous other researchers and practitioners within and outside McGill engage with the Landscapes theme through seminars, workshops and other ad hoc opportunities.

We host workshops on a variety of topics related to landscape sustainability with the goal of advancing multi-disciplinary understanding about how to understand, assess, and achieve landscape sustainability. These workshops lead to synthetic publications on a variety of topics related to landscape sustainability.

We train graduate students and postdocs in knowledge-to-action science by creating a new generation of teaching and learning courses/internships on landscape sustainability research.

The Northern Landscapes working group, in collaboration with the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED), addresses climate change adaptation and mitigation in Canada's Arctic using high-resolution climate simulations and developing innovative approaches to engineering and infrastructure challenges.

Theme co-Leads

Elena Bennett

Dr. Elena Bennett is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and McGill School of Environment. Her research centers on questions about the design and management of working landscapes (such as agricultural areas) to enhance social-ecological resilience through long-term maintenance of ecosystem services and human well-being. She is co-chair of the Future Earth Core Research Project ecoSERVICES, which aims to set the research agenda for ecosystem services in the coming decade, and a lead author of the IPBES Global Assessment. Dr. Bennett was a Leopold Leadership Fellow (2012), and a Trottier Public Policy Professor (2013-2014). She has won awards for undergraduate teaching, graduate supervision, contributions to campus sustainability, and contributions to the sustainability of her local community. In 2016, she was named one of six NSERC Steacie Fellows.

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Brian Robinson

Brian E. Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography. His research looks at how people meet their needs through use of ecosystems and natural resources, the role this plays in development in poorer regions of the world, and policies that mediate the connections between people and landscapes. Current projects examine the role that landscapes provide in supporting livelihood needs in developing countries, how environmental policies with good intentions play out in the real world, and how changes in institutions and governance can impacts social and ecological outcomes.

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Laxmi Sushama

Dr. Laxmi Sushama is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics and Trottier Chair in Sustainability in Engineering and Design. She held the Tier II Canada Research Chair in Regional Climate Modelling for two consecutive terms at Centre ESCER and her expertise in science and engineering spans the areas of regional climate modeling, climate change and variability, hydrometeorologic extremes, engineering hydrology and water resources engineering. She is currently leading the Canadian Network for Regional Climate and Weather Processes, which focuses on reducing uncertainty in climate projections and weather predictions for Canada’s northern and Arctic regions. Her research has laid important steps towards improved understanding of land dynamics and its climate interactions and feedbacks at various spatial and temporal scales, and climate-change impacts on Canadian water resources to enhance community and infrastructure resilience. Her research at the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED) focuses on climate-sustainability nexus, with a special emphasis on urban environments, associated infrastructure and climate resilience.

 

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Other Collaborators

Jan Adamowski, Department of Bioresource Engineering
Jeff Cardille, Department of NRS
Luc Chouinard, Department of Civil Engineering
Oliver Coomes, Department of Geog
Sylvie De Blois, Department of Plant Science
Dominic Frigon, Department of Civil Engineering
Subhasis Ghoshal, Department of Civil Engineering
Andy Gonzalez, Department of Biology
Blaine Harvey, Department of Education
Ferri Hassani, Department of Mining Engineering
Gordon Hickey, Department of NRS
Murray Humphries, Department of NRS
Graham MacDonald, Department of Geography
Mohammed Meguid, Department of Civil Engineering
Luis Mirand-Moreno, Department of Civil Engineering
Saeed Mirza, Department of Civil Engineering
Hani Mitri, Department of Mining Engineering
Van-Thanh-Van Nguyen, Department of Civil Engineering
Yann le Polain de Waroux, Department of Geography
Stephanie Posthumus, Department of Language, Literature, Culture
Philip Seguin, Department of Plant Science
Ishmael Vaccaro, Department of Anthropology
Christian Von Sperber, Department of Geography

Funded students & postdocs

Marie Dade, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Geography 

Marie's research focuses on how we can create more sustainable landscapes through better management of multiple ecosystem services (the benefits people receive from ecosystems) within socio-ecological systems. Marie examines how different policies and management actions influence access to multiple ecosystem services, and uses this information to identify more effective strategies that can enable landscapes to continue to provide multiple ecosystem services to growing human populations into the future.

Sarah Harris, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Geography
Seok Geun Oh, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics 
Enzo Angeles Pasco, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics (co-supervised with Prof. Kumral, Mining Engineering)
Shahe Shnorhokian, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Minghan Xu, Department of Mining and Materials Engineering

2018 Landscape Scholars

Syed Abidi, Department of Economics
Morgan Crowley, Department of Natural Resources
Olivia del Giorgio, Department of Geography
Dalal Hanna, Department of Natural Resources
Martha Lee, Department of Epidemiology
Luci Lu, Department of Geography
Kerstin Shreiber, Department of Geography
Duncan Warltier, Department of Natural Resources

Other students and postdocs

Mahmoud Alzoubi (Department of Mining and Materials Engineering)
Vincent Poitras, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Jesse Rieb, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Natural Resource Sciences
Caio Ruman, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Bernardo Teufel, Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics

 

Theme supported publications

Falardeau, M, EM Bennett, and C Raudsepp-Hearne. 2018. A novel approach for co-producing positive scenarios that explore agency: Case study from the Canadian Arctic. Sustainability Science 14: 205-220.

Frei, B, D Renard, M Mitchell, V Seufert, B Chaplin-Kramer, J Rhemtulla, and EM Bennett. 2018. Bright spots in agricultural landscapes: Identifying areas exceeding expectations for multifunctionality and biodiversity. Journal of Applied Ecology: 1-13.

Frei, B, EM Bennett, and JT Kerr. 2018. Heterogenous, multifunctional agricultural landscapes critical for species of conservation concern in agroecosystems with a long history of agriculture. Regional Environmental Change 7: 2105-2115.

Hanna, D, C Ouellet-Dallaire, S Tomscha, and EM Bennett. 2017. A review of riverine ecosystem service quantification: shortcomings and recommendations Journal of Applied Ecology 55: 1299–1311.

Nesme, T, GS Metson, EM Bennett. 2018. Global phosphorus flows through agricultural trade. Global Environmental Change 50: 133-141.

Robinson BE, Masuda Y, Kelly A, Holland MB, Bedford C, Childress M, Fletschner D, Game E, Ginsburg C, Hilhorst T, Lawry S, Miteva D, Musengezi J, Naughton-Treves N, Nolte C, Sunderlin W, Veit P. 2018. “Incorporating land tenure security in conservation” Conservation Letters. 11(2):e12383. doi: 10.1111/conl.12383.

Sai M, Smailes M, Zheng H, Robinson BE. 2019. “Who is vulnerable to ecosystem service change? Reconciling locally disaggregated ecosystem service supply and demand” Ecological Economics. 157:312-320.

Zheng H, Wang LJ, Peng WJ, Zhang CP, Li C, Robinson BE, Wu XC, Kong LQ, Li RN, Xiao Y, Xu WH, Ouyang ZY, Daily G. 2019. “Realizing the Values of Natural Capital for Inclusive, Sustainable Development: Informing China’s New Ecological Development Strategy.” Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

Other related publications

Rieb, JT, R Chaplin-Kramer, GC Daily, PR Armsworth, K Böhning-Gaese, A Bonn, GS Cumming, F Eigenbrod, V Grimm, BM Jackson, A Marques, SK Pattanayak, HM Pereira, GD Peterson, TH Ricketts, BE Robinson, M Schröter, LA Schulte-Moore, R Seppelt, MG Turner, and EM Bennett. 2017. When, where, and how much does nature matter? BioScience 67(9): 820-833.

Bennett, EM. 2017. Research frontiers in ecosystem service science. Ecosystems (Special Feature on the Future of Ecosystem Ecology) 20 (1): 31-37.

Martin-Lopez, B, M Felipe-Lucia, EM Bennett, A Norström, GD Peterson, T Plieninger, C Hicks, F Turkelboom, M García-Llorente, S Jacobs, S Lavorel, B Locatelli. A novel telecoupling framework to assess social relations across spatial scales for ecosystem services research. Journal of Ecosystem Management 241: 251-263. [Link]

Bennett, E. M. 2017. Research Frontiers in Ecosystem Service Science. Ecosystems. DOI: 10.1007/s10021-016-0049-0. [Link]

Palomo, I., M. R. Felipe-Lucia, E. M. Bennett, B. Martín-López, and U. Pascual. 2016. Disentangling the Pathways and Effects of Ecosystem Service Co-Production. Advances in Ecological Research. DOI: 10.1016/bs.aecr.2015.09.003. [Link]

Renard, D., J. M. Rhemtulla, and E. M. Bennett. 2015. Historical Dynamics in Ecosystem Service Bundles. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1502565112. [Link]

Bennett, E. M., W. Cramer, A. Begossi, G. Cundill, B. Egoh, I. R. Geijzendorffer, C. B. Krug, S. Lavorel, L. Lebel, B. Martin-Lopez, P. Meyfroidt, H. A. Mooney, J. L. Nel, U. Pascual, K. Payet, N. Perez Harguindeguy, G. D.Peterson, A-H., Prieur-Richard, B. Reyers, P. Roebeling, R. Seppelt, M.Solan, P. Tschakert, T. Tschntke, B. L. Turner, P. H. Verburg, E. Viglizzo, P. C.L. White, and G. Woodward. 2015. Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being for sustainability: Three Challenges for designing research for sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 14:76-85. [Link]

Steffen, W., K. Richardson, J. Rockström, S. Cornell, I. Fetzer, E. M. Bennett, R. Biggs, S Carpenter, W. de Vries, C. A. de Wit, D. Gerten, J. Heinke, C. Folke, G. Mace, L. M. Persson, V. Ramanathan, B. Reyers, S. Sörlin. 2015. Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347: 6223. 10.1126/science.1259855 [Link]

E. M. Bennett, G. D. Peterson, and L. Gordon. 2009. Understanding relationships among multiple ecosystem services. Ecology Letters 12: 1-11. [Link]

E. M. Bennett, S. R. Carpenter, L. Gordon, N. Ramankutty, P. Balvanera, B. Campbell, W. Cramer, J. Foley, C. Folke, L. Karlberg, J. Lui, H. Lotze-Campen, N. Mueller, G.D. Peterson, S. Polasky, J. Rockstrom, R. J. Scholes, and M. Spirenburg. 2014. Toward a more resilient agriculture. Solutions 5(5): 65-75. [Link]

The ‘foodshed’ concept is increasingly used to discuss aspects of the geography of urban food systems and particularly for describing linkages between food-producing and food-consuming regions at different scales. Although foodshed analysis is rapidly growing and becoming more spatially-detailed, empirical analysis of food flows to cities and its relevance to landscape sustainability, including implications for multiple ecosystem services, is a major knowledge gap. The core objective of this project will be to map the geographic origins of Montreal’s food sourcing from within Quebec, and specifically the nearby Montérégie region, based on surveys conducted at Montreal farmers markets and potentially food retailers or restaurants.The project asks how do different foodshed configurations affect multiple ecosystem services.

This project is a collaboration with ResNet researchers and partners to develop a transdisciplinary framework to assess landscape sustainability. There are three parts to this project: (1) an ecosystem service and natural capital-based framework for assessing the ecological and social sustainability of working landscapes; (2) an analysis of how a network of linked translational ecology working landscapes can use this framework to assess local sustainability and advance the field of translational ecology and effectively scale up to a pan-Canadian understanding; (3) an analysis of ResNet landscapes leading to a proposed set of principles for managing working landscapes.

This project is exploring how property rights influence the distribution of ecosystem service benefits across landscapes, and how we can use property rights to plan more sustainable landscapes.

Using the Adirondack Park landscape in New York State as a case study, we determine who can gain a benefit from the ecosystem services provided on each property within the landscape, given the property right regimes in place.

These results will help to inform more sustainable landscape planning by determining where property rights regimes should be allocated across landscapes to ensure everyone has access the to the ecosystem services they desire, while also preventing the over-exploitation of these services.

Pooling together data collected from McGill researchers, the Poverty & Environment Network (PEN), and eight European projects focused on environmental resource use among poorer populations in developing countries, we aim to provide the most comprehensive and global assessment of landscape dependence ever assembled.

The Landscapes Scholars (LS) cohort is creating a framework for identifying and analyzing the ecosystem services embodied in food commodity value chains and applying this framework to case studies in the USA, Central America and Tanzania.

The 2018-20 cohort of Landscape Scholars are: Syed Abidi (Economics), Morgan Crowley (Natural Resources), Olivia del Giorgio (Geography), Dalal Hanna (Natural Resources), Martha Lee (Epidemiology), Luci Lu (Geography), Kerstin Shreiber (Geography), and Duncan Warltier (Natural Resources).

Future climate change in the Arctic is expected to be among the greatest anywhere on Earth because of the amplification by positive feedbacks in the climate system. Many of these changes relate to risks facing Arctic communities, while also bringing some opportunities. The northern landscapes working group tries to understand the evolving landscapes of the north from a regional Earth System perspective and its implications for engineering systems.

This project, in particular, focuses on identifying critical parameters and thresholds governing the performance of engineering systems in Canada’s permafrost regions to support development of innovative design techniques for future sustainable engineering systems, using existing regional climate simulations and observations. Furthermore, this project will apply ultra-high resolution engineering-climate simulations for the northern regions of Canada. 

Read the most recent publication on abrupt changes in soil moisture and fire severity, and the implications this will have for stability of infrastructure, flooding hazards, as well as ecosystem and human activities in the north.

Diesel equipment, including trucks and shovels, used in the mining industry significantly contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The main focus of this research is to investigate how much equipment maintenance activities can reduce GHG emissions.

Using historical truck data, the effect of equipment reliability on fuel consumption is quantified and then analysed in order to understand the relationship between fuel consumption and equipment reliability. The research will quantify the relative importance of equipment reliability on fuel consumption. Thus, the mining operations will develop maintenance strategies that assist in reducing GHG emissions to some extent.

Pitch & Enrich is an annual event, hosted by the Landscape Theme, where researchers at McGill can pitch novel, high risk/high reward ideas and have them enriched through the feedback of others in the audience. Those who pitch are invited to prepare proposals for seed funding through the Pitch & Enrich program. Currently funded projects include:

• “Groundwater supply and demand in sub-Saharan Africa” (Aurélie Harou, Department of Natural Resource Sciences
• “Mennonite land use history and landscape sustainability in Latin America” (Yann le Polain de Waroux, Department of Geography)
• “Are salt marshes within watersheds dominated by urban or agricultural landscapes sustainable?” (Nagissa Mahmoudi, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences)