Geography and Planning

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Assessing the role of geographic context in transportation mode detection from GPS data
(Journal of Transport Geography, 2022-04) Avipsa, Roy; Fuller, Daniel; Trisalyn, Nelson; Kedron, Peter
The increasing availability of health monitoring devices and smartphones has created an opportunity for researchers to access high-resolution (spatial and temporal) mobility data for understanding travel behavior in cities. Although information from GPS data has been used in several studies to detect transportation modes, there is a research gap in understanding the role of geographic context in transportation mode detection. Integrating the geography in which mobility occurs, provides context clues that may allow models predicting transportation modes to be more generalizable. Our goals are first, to develop a data-driven modeling framework for transportation mode detection using GPS mobility data along with geographic context, and second, to assess how model accuracy and generalizability varies upon adding geographic context. To this extent we extracted features from raw GPS mobility data (speed, altitude, turning angle and net displacement) and integrated context in the form of geographic features to classify active (i.e. walk/bike), public (i.e. bus/train), and private (i.e. car) transportation modes in three different Canadian cities - Montreal, St. Johns, and Vancouver. To assess the role of integrating geographic context in mode detection, we adopted two different modeling approaches – generalized and context-specific, and compared results using random forests, extreme gradient boost, and multilayer perceptron classifiers. Our results indicate that for context-specific models the highest classification accuracy improved by 64% for Montreal, by 74% for St. John's and by 77% for Vancouver compared to the generalized model. We also found that the multilayer perceptron (96%) achieved the highest classification accuracy upon adding contextual variables compared to random forests (94.6%) and extreme gradient boost (93.3%) classifier. Our study highlights that adding contextual information specific to a city's geography can improve the predictive accuracy of transportation mode detection models, however, in case of limited knowledge about the geographic setting of a study area, a generalized model combining GPS data from several cities may still be useful for predicting modes from trip data.
Rethinking walkability and developing a conceptual definition of active living environments to guide research and practice
(BMC Public Health, 2022) Tobin, Melissa; Hajna, Samantha; Orychock, Kassia; Ross, Nancy; DeVries, Megan; Villeneuve, Paul J; Frank, Lawrence D; McCormack, Gavin R; Wasfi, Rania; Steinmetz-Wood, Madeleine; Gilliland, Jason; Booth, Gillian L; Winters, Meghan; Kestens, Yan; Manaugh, Kevin; Rainham, Daniel; Gauvin, Lise; Widener, Michael J; Muhajarine, Nazeem; Luan, Hui; Fuller, Daniel
Background Walkability is a popular term used to describe aspects of the built and social environment that have important population-level impacts on physical activity, energy balance, and health. Although the term is widely used by researchers, practitioners, and the general public, and multiple operational definitions and walkability measurement tools exist, there are is no agreed-upon conceptual definition of walkability. Method To address this gap, researchers from Memorial University of Newfoundland hosted “The Future of Walkability Measures Workshop” in association with researchers from the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) in November 2017. During the workshop, trainees, researchers, and practitioners worked together in small groups to iteratively develop and reach consensus about a conceptual definition and name for walkability. The objective of this paper was to discuss and propose a conceptual definition of walkability and related concepts. Results In discussions during the workshop, it became clear that the term walkability leads to a narrow conception of the environmental features associated with health as it inherently focuses on walking. As a result, we suggest that the term Active Living Environments, as has been previously proposed in the literature, are more appropriate. We define Active Living Environments (ALEs) as the emergent natural, built, and social properties of neighbourhoods that promote physical activity and health and allow for equitable access to health-enhancing resources. Conclusions We believe that this broader conceptualization allows for a more comprehensive understanding of how built, natural, and social environments can contribute to improved health for all members of the population.
Urban form in Canada at a small-area level: Quantifying “compactness” and “sprawl” with bayesian multivariate spatial factor analysis
(Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 2021) Luan, Hui; Fuller, Daniel
Quantifying urban forms to explore urban compactness or sprawl has become increasingly popular in multiple fields in the past decades. However, previous studies predominantly analyze the multidimensional phenomenon at large-area levels such as metropolitan areas, concealing variations that probably occur at small-area levels. Canadian studies measuring urban forms are usually conducted at the regional level with inconsistent indicators and approaches, hindering meaningful comparisons of compactness or sprawling between different regions. This study bridges a previous gap by applying Bayesian multivariate spatial factor analysis to construct a new composite urban compactness index for all Census Tracts (CT) in Canada. Nine urban form indictors representing four dimensions, density, centering, land use, and street connectivity are used in developing the index. Posterior probability is used to detect CTs that are most compact or sprawling. Results indicate that gross population and employment densities best characterize urban compactness at the CT level while land-use mix is the least central indictor to define the multi-faceted concept. Notable differences of urban compactness are detected across Canada and among different Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA). The most compact CTs usually locate in downtown or city center areas of a CMA. Larger and more populous CMAs, which also capture a larger extent of periphery areas, are not necessarily more compact and vice versa, suggesting the need to measure local variations of urban compactness. The constructed composite index allows direct urban compactness comparisons across different Canadian regions. Findings from this study can be used to guide smart and sustainable urban development in Canada.
Gentrification, perceptions of neighborhood change, and mental health in Montréal, Québec
(SSM - Population Health, 2023-04) Youngbloom, Amy; Thierry, Benoit; Fuller, Daniel; Kestens, Yan; Winters, Meghan; Hirsch, Jana A; Michael, Yvonne L; Firth, Caislin
While census-defined measures of gentrification are often used in research on gentrification and health, surveys can be used to better understand how residents perceive neighborhood change, and the implications for mental health. Whether or not gentrification affects mental health may depend on the extent to which an individual perceives changes in their neighborhood. Using health and map-based survey data, collected from 2020 to 2021, from the Interventions, Research, and Action in Cities Team, we examined links between perceptions of neighborhood change, census-defined neighborhood gentrification at participant residential addresses, and mental health among 505 adults living in Montréal. After adjusting for age, gender, race, education, and duration at current residence, greater perceived affordability and more positive feelings about neighborhood changes were associated with better mental health, as measured by the mental health component of the short-form health survey. Residents who perceived more change to the social environment had lower mental health scores, after adjusting individual covariates. Census-defined gentrification was not significantly associated with mental health, and perceptions of neighborhood change did not significantly modify the effect of gentrification on mental health. Utilizing survey tools can help researchers understand the role that perceptions of neighborhood change play in the understanding how neighborhood change impacts mental health.
WalkRollMap.org: Crowdsourcing barriers to mobility
(Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, 2023) Laberee, Karen; Nelson, Trisalyn; Boss, Darren; Ferster, Colin; Hosford, Kate; Fuller, Daniel; Cloutier, Marie-Soleil; Winters, Meghan
Walking is a simple way to improve health through physical activity. Yet many people experience barriers to walking from a variety of physical, social, and psychological factors that impact their mobility. A challenge for managing and studying pedestrian environments is that barriers often occur at local scales (e.g., sidewalk features), yet such fine scale data on pedestrian facilities and experiences are often lacking or out of date. In response, our team developed WalkRollMap.org an online mapping tool that empowers communities by providing them with tools for crowdsourcing their own open data source. In this manuscript we highlight key functions of the tool, discuss initial approaches to community outreach, and share trends in reporting from the first nine months of operation. As of July 27, 2022, there have been 897 reports, of which 53% served to identify hazards, 34% missing amenities, and 14% incidents. The most frequently reported issues were related to sidewalks (15%), driver behavior (19%), and marked crosswalks (7%). The most common suggested amenities were sidewalks, marked crosswalks, connections (i.e., pathways between streets), and curb cuts. The most common types of incidents all included conflicts with vehicles. Data compiled through WalkRollMap.org offer unique potential for local and timely information on microscale barriers to mobility and are available for use by anyone as data are open and downloadable.
Trade-offs and synergies for urban Production-Living-Ecological spatial Patterns-Comparison study between Fuzhou, China, and Saskatoon, Canada
(Ecological Indicators, 2024-11) Wang, Xi; li, Xiaomei; Sha, Jinming; Zhang, Hao; Shifaw, Eshetu; Guo, Xulin; Lai, Shuhui; Wang, Jinliang
Rapid industrialization and urbanization have significantly changed urban spatial patterns, resulting in the urban ecosystem degradation and urban spatial conflicts. The challenge requires the urban spatial planning more sophisticated for developing eco-city models in the perspective of urban land multifunctionality. The ProductionLiving-Ecological(PLE) spatial pattern is proposed for effective eco-city planning in Chinese urban cases. Given the differing climatic and cultural contexts, are the PLE spatial patterns comparable between cities from different continents? This study aims to compare the characteristics of PLE spatial patterns and the trade-offs & synergies of PLE spaces between Fuzhou city, China and Saskatoon, Canada for developing the eco-city models. First, the paper identified the PLE spaces by integrating multi-source data, then analyzed the PLE spatial agglomeration characteristics by using the average nearest neighbor and kernel density analysis, finally detected the trade-offs and synergies between functional spaces by Spearman correlation and bivariate spatial autocorrelation. The results showed the distinctly different PLE spatial patterns and the trade-offs & synergies of PLE spaces between the two eco-cities in Fuzhou, China and Saskatoon, Canada in 2022. (1) For the PLE space composition, the percentages of ecological space in Fuzhou and Saskatoon were 64.6% and 36.4%, respectively, while the pro portions of the most suitable residential space in two cities from POI data were 2.4% and 4.1%, respectively. (2) For PLE spatial agglomeration, ecological space in Fuzhou was characterized with a random distribution with the average nearest neighbor index of 1.19, and scattered as small patches in urban hilly area covered with evergreen broadleaf trees, while in Saskatoon the index was less than 1.00 with a clustered distribution in numerous city parks covered with grass and shrubs; Fuzhou’s multifunctional spaces were clustered in the central urban area surrounded by ring roads and in Changle District, while Saskatoon’s were dispersed with large patches. (3) For the trade-offs & synergies of PLE space, the ecological spaces in two cities were suppressed. In Fuzhou, the trade-off area ratio of the ecological space to other fuctional spaces was ranged 50% to 58%, while in Saskatoon, it was 40% to 47%. (4) The PLE spatial pattern can clearly sketch the different eco-city frameworks in different continents. Fuzhou’s eco-city model was characterized by “high ecological space/compacted living space/strong trade-off between ES and other spaces” and Saskatoon’s was featured with “low ecological space/spacious residential space with high livability/ weak trade-off between ES and other spaces”. Therefore, Fuzhou faced more challenges of intense spatial competition in the context of dense population. Our findings reveals the practical requirements for optimizing urban space and functions in terms of economic, ecological, and livability considerations. Additionally, they would provide valuable insights for long-term urban spatial planning and development strategies.
The Ecology and Evolution of Beavers: Ecosystem Engineers That Ameliorate Climate Change
(Annual Reviews, 2024-10-09) Fairfax, Emily; Westbrook, Cherie
Beavers, Castor canadensis in North America and Castor fiber in Eurasia, are widely referred to as nature's engineers due to their ability to rapidly transform diverse landscapes into dynamic wetland ecosystems. Few other organisms exhibit the same level of control over local geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecological conditions. Though freshwater ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to changing climate, beavers and their wetland homes have persisted throughout the Northern Hemisphere during numerous prior periods of climatic change. Some research suggests that the need to create stable, climate-buffered habitats at high latitudes during the Miocene directly led to the evolution of dam construction. As we follow an unprecedented trajectory of anthropogenic warming, we have the unique opportunity to describe how beaver ecosystem engineering ameliorates climate change today. Here, we review how beavers create and maintain local hydroclimatic stability and influence larger-scale biophysical ecosystem processes in the context of past, present, and future climate change.
Comparing the Sources of Sediment Retained by Beaver Dams and Beaver Dam Analogs
(Wiley, 2024-10-14) Westbrook, Cherie; Cooper, David J.
Beavers modify riverine systems by building dams that alter downstream fluxes of water and sediment. Where beavers have been lost and stream channels degraded, beaver dam analogs (BDAs) are being used to mimic the effects of beaver engineering. Central to the success of these structures in accelerating stream recovery is creating similar ecosystem responses as beaver dams including sediment retention. Unknown is the relative importance of beaver actions versus erosion in the catchment in generating the retained sediment. This study tested the viability of sediment fingerprinting to determine the source of sediment retained by beaver dams and BDAs in a watershed in Alberta, Canada. Concentrations of 29 elements were measured as potential tracers from known sediment sources: upland, terrace, stream bank, and beaver canal. Virtual mixture tests, used to compare the computed source estimates with known source mixtures, revealed that sediment fingerprinting is a robust method for identifying sources of sediment retained by beaver ponds and BDAs. The un-mixing model results indicate that on average 56% of the sediment retained by the beaver dams originated from terraces, 23% from uplands, and 13% from beaver canals. About 89% of sediment retained by the BDAs originated from eroding stream banks. We conclude that the geomorphic effects of beavers and their dams are more diverse, resulting in more diverse sources of sediment retained by their dams. This differentiates beaver dams from BDAs. The study has implications for informing management practices that involve beavers and beaver mimicry.
An ecological quantification of the relationships between water, sanitation and infant, child, and maternal mortality
(Environmental Health, 2012) Cheng, June J.; Schuster Wallace, Corinne; Watt, Susan; Newbold, Bruce; Mente, Andrew
Background: Water and sanitation access are known to be related to newborn, child, and maternal health. Our study attempts to quantify these relationships globally using country-level data: How much does improving access to water and sanitation influence infant, child, and maternal mortality? Methods: Data for 193 countries were abstracted from global databases (World Bank, WHO, and UNICEF). Linear regression was used for the outcomes of under-five mortality rate and infant mortality rate (IMR). These results are presented as events per 1000 live births. Ordinal logistic regression was used to compute odds ratios for the outcome of maternal mortality ratio (MMR). Results: Under-five mortality rate decreased by 1.17 (95%CI 1.08-1.26) deaths per 1000,p< 0.001, for every quartile increase in population water access after adjustments for confounders. There was a similar relationship between quartile increase of sanitation access and under-five mortality rate, with a decrease of 1.66 (95%CI 1.11-1.32) deaths per 1000,p<0.001. Improved water access was also related to IMR, with the IMR decreasing by 1.14 (95%CI 1.05-1.23) deaths per 1000,p< 0.001, with increasing quartile of access to improved water source. The significance of this relationship was retained with quartile improvement in sanitation access, where the decrease in IMR was 1.66 (95%CI 1.11-1.32) deaths per 1000,p< 0.001. The estimated odds ratio that increased quartile of water access was significantly associated with increased quartile of MMR was 0.58 (95%CI 0.39-0.86),p= 0.008. The corresponding odds ratio for sanitation was 0.52 (95%CI 0.32-0.85),p= 0.009, both suggesting that better water and sanitation were associated with decreased MMR. Conclusions: Our analyses suggest that access to water and sanitation independently contribute to child and maternal mortality outcomes. If the world is to seriously address the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child and maternal mortality, then improved water and sanitation accesses are key strategies.
The Impacts of Climate Change on Water-, Food-, Vector- and Rodent-Borne Diseases
(Health Canada, 2008) Charron, Dominique; Fleury, Manon; Lindsay, Robbin; Ogden, Nicholas; Schuster Wallace, Corinne
Using Photovoice as a Community Based Participatory Research Tool for Changing Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Behaviours in Usoma, Kenya
(BioMed Research International, 2015) Bisung, Elijah; Elliott, Susan J.; Abudho, Dr. Bernard; Karanja, Diana M.; Schuster Wallace, Corinne
Recent years have witnessed an increase in the use of community based participatory research (CBPR) tools for understanding environment and health issues and facilitating social action. This paper explores the application and utility of photovoice for understanding water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) behaviours and catalysing community led solutions to change behaviours. Between June and August 2013, photovoice was conducted with eight (8) women in Usoma, a lakeshore community in Western Kenya with a follow-up community meeting (baraza) in May 2014 to discuss findings with the community members and government officials. In the first part of the study, photovoice one-on-one interviews were used to explore local perceptions and practices around water-health linkages and how the ecological and socio-political environment shapes these perceptions and practices. This paper, which is the second component of the study, uses photovoice group discussions to explore participants’ experiences with and (re)action to the photographs and the photovoice project. The findings illustrate that photovoice was an effective CBPR methodology for understanding behaviours, creating awareness, facilitating collective action, and engaging with local government and local health officials at the water-health nexus.
The Virtual Water Gallery: Changing Attitudes through Art
(European Geosciences Union, 2023) Arnal, Louise; Clark, Martyn P.; Dumanski, Stacey
Water is life. Water-related challenges, such as droughts, floods, wildfires, water quality degradation, permafrost thaw and glacier melt, exacerbated by climate change, affect everyone. Yet, it is challenging to communicate science on difficult, highly volatile topics such as water and climate change. Conceptualizing water-related environmental and social issues in novel ways, with engagement between diverse audiences may lead to comprehensive solutions to these complex challenges. Art can be a catalyst in the co-creation of new knowledge for the benefit of society. The Virtual Water Gallery (VWG) is a transdisciplinary science and art project of the Global Water Futures (GWF) program. Launched in 2020, the VWG aims to provide a collaborative space for dialogues between water experts, artists, and the wider public, to explore water challenges. As part of this project, 13 artists representing women’s, men’s and Indigenous voices across Canada were paired with teams of GWF scientists to co-explore specific water challenges in various Canadian ecoregions and communities. These collaborations led to the co-creation of artworks exhibited online on the VWG (www.virtualwatergallery.ca) in 2021. The VWG recently came to life in 2022 with an in-person exhibition in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. Surveys were developed to capture changes in perspectives regarding climate change and water challenges through this art-science exhibit. Participants of the VWG (artists and scientists), visitors to the online gallery, and visitors to the in-person exhibition in Canmore were all invited to take part in those surveys. The preliminary results from the surveys suggest that participants experienced changes in behaviour regarding water-related climate change mitigation, and that the degree of change depends on factors such as age, income and lived experience (i.e., floods and droughts). The results help elucidate how art viewers engage with art based on science and how science messages can be more effectively communicated through art.
Translating hydrology research into practice: A Canadian Perspective
(European Geosciences Union, 2023) Pietroniro, Alain; Rokaya, Prabin; Schuster-Wallace, Corinne; Pomeroy, John
Hydrology research is regarded as vital for advancing human development and environmental conservation through improved hydrological process understanding and by devising solutions to address water management challenges. This is particularly acute in a time of global change and the need to find pathways to water sustainability. Success for research in hydrology is often measured through quantitative research outputs, such as the number of journal publications, citation indices, number of students trained, patents, and external research funding. User involvement in the research and development process is rarely considered a metric for success in hydrology. Despite successful scientific or engineering advancements, a greater scientific understanding of hydrology and ever-increasing publications, much of the research has limited uptake by practitioners and implementation into practice, leading to a growing gap between research and practice. This lack of utilisation is not due to a lack of need by users, but rather is a symptom of the disconnect between these advances and research that would most add value to practitioners and their application needs. We explore some outstanding challenges in translating academic research into practice and make some recommendations to bridge the increasing gaps between research and practice through a transdisciplinary approach, user engagement metrics in funded research and strong knowledge mobilization. We also discuss the success and challenges of these approaches in the Global Water Futures program along with lessons learned.
Advances in mapping sub-canopy snow depth with unmanned aerial vehicles using structure from motion and lidar techniques
(Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union, 2019) Harder, Phillip; Pomeroy, John; Helgason, Warren D.
Vegetation has a tremendous influence on snow processes and snowpack dynamics yet remote sensing techniques to resolve the spatial variability of sub-canopy snow depth are lacking. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have had recent widespread application to capture high resolution information on snow processes and are herein applied to the sub-canopy snow depth challenge. Previous demonstrations of snow depth mapping with UAV Structure from Motion (SfM) and airborne lidar have focussed on non-vegetated surfaces or reported large errors in the presence of vegetation. In contrast, UAV-lidar systems have high-density point clouds, measure returns from a wide range of scan angles, and so have a greater likelihood of successfully sensing the sub-canopy snow depth. The effectiveness of UAV-lidar and UAV-SfM in mapping snow depth in both open and forested terrain was tested in a 2019 field campaign in the Canadian Rockies Hydrological Observatory, Alberta and at Canadian Prairie sites near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Only UAV-lidar could successfully measure the sub-canopy snow surface with reliable sub-canopy point coverage, and consistent error metrics (RMSE <0.17m and bias -0.03m to -0.13m). Relative to UAV-lidar, UAV-SfM did not consistently sense the sub-canopy snow surface, the interpolation needed to account for point cloud gaps introduced interpolation artefacts, and error metrics demonstrate relatively large variability (RMSE <0.33m and bias 0.08 m to -0.14m). With the demonstration of sub-canopy snow depth mapping capabilities a number of early applications are presented to showcase the ability of UAV-lidar to effectively quantify the many multiscale snow processes defining snowpack dynamics in mountain and prairie environments.
Hybrid forecasting: blending climate predictions with AI models
(Copernicus Publications [Commercial Publisher], European Geosciences Union [Society Publisher], 2023) Slater, Louise; Arnal, Louise; Boucher, Marie-Amélie; Chang, Annie Y.-Y.; Moulds, Simon; Murphy, Conor; Nearing, Grey; Shalev, Guy; Shen, Chaopeng; Speight, Linda; Villarini, Gabriele; Wilby, Robert L.; Wood, Andrew; Zappa, Massimiliano
Hybrid hydroclimatic forecasting systems employ data-driven (statistical or machine learning) methods to harness and integrate a broad variety of predictions from dynamical, physics-based models – such as numerical weather prediction, climate, land, hydrology, and Earth system models – into a final prediction product. They are recognized as a promising way of enhancing the prediction skill of meteorological and hydroclimatic variables and events, including rainfall, temperature, streamflow, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, or atmospheric rivers. Hybrid forecasting methods are now receiving growing attention due to advances in weather and climate prediction systems at subseasonal to decadal scales, a better appreciation of the strengths of AI, and expanding access to computational resources and methods. Such systems are attractive because they may avoid the need to run a computationally expensive offline land model, can minimize the effect of biases that exist within dynamical outputs, benefit from the strengths of machine learning, and can learn from large datasets, while combining different sources of predictability with varying time horizons. Here we review recent developments in hybrid hydroclimatic forecasting and outline key challenges and opportunities for further research. These include obtaining physically explainable results, assimilating human influences from novel data sources, integrating new ensemble techniques to improve predictive skill, creating seamless prediction schemes that merge short to long lead times, incorporating initial land surface and ocean/ice conditions, acknowledging spatial variability in landscape and atmospheric forcing, and increasing the operational uptake of hybrid prediction schemes.
The Impact of Meteorological Forcing Uncertainty on Hydrological Modeling: A Global Analysis of Cryosphere Basins
(Wiley [Commercial Publisher], American Geophysical Union [Client Organisation], 2023) Tang, Guoqiang; Clark, Martyn; Knoben, Wouter; Liu, Hongli; Gharari, Shervan; Arnal, Louise; Beck, Hylke; Wood, Andrew W.; Newman, Andrew J.; Papalexiou, Simon Michael
Meteorological forcing is a major source of uncertainty in hydrological modeling. The recent development of probabilistic large-domain meteorological data sets enables convenient uncertainty characterization, which however is rarely explored in large-domain research. This study analyzes how uncertainties in meteorological forcing data affect hydrological modeling in 289 representative cryosphere basins by forcing the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) and mizuRoute models with precipitation and air temperature ensembles from the Ensemble Meteorological Data set for Planet Earth (EM-Earth). EM-Earth probabilistic estimates are used in ensemble simulation for uncertainty analysis. The results reveal the magnitude, spatial distribution, and scale effect of uncertainties in meteorological, snow, runoff, soil water, and energy variables. There are three main findings. (a) The uncertainties in precipitation and temperature lead to substantial uncertainties in hydrological model outputs, some of which exceed 100% of the magnitude of the output variables themselves. (b) The uncertainties of different variables show distinct scale effects caused by spatial averaging or temporal averaging. (c) Precipitation uncertainties have the dominant impact for most basins and variables, while air temperature uncertainties are also nonnegligible, sometimes contributing more to modeling uncertainties than precipitation uncertainties. We find that three snow-related variables (snow water equivalent, snowfall amount, and snowfall fraction) can be used to estimate the impact of air temperature uncertainties for different model output variables. In summary, this study provides insight into the impact of probabilistic data sets on hydrological modeling and quantifies the uncertainties in cryosphere basin modeling that stem from the meteorological forcing data.
Harvesting Local Energy: A Case Study of Community-Led Bioenergy Development in Galena, Alaska
(MDPI, 2022) Menghwani, Vikas; Walker, Chad; Kalke, Tim; Noble, Bram; Poelzer, Greg
Community-led bioenergy projects show great promise to address a range of issues for remote and Indigenous Arctic communities that typically rely on diesel for meeting their energy demands. However, there is very little research devoted to better understanding what makes individual projects successful. In this study, we analyze the case of the Galena Bioenergy Project (Alaska)—a biomass heating project that uses locally sourced woody biomass to help meet the heating demands of a large educational campus. Using project documents and other publicly available reports, we evaluate the project’s success using three indicators: operational, environmental, and community level socio-economic benefits. We find that the project shows signs of success in all three respects. It has a reliable fuel supply chain for operations, makes contributions towards greenhouse gas reductions by replacing diesel and has improved energy and economic security for the community. We also examine enabling factors behind the project’s success and identify the following factors as crucial: community-level input and support, state level financial support, access to forest biomass with no competing use, predictable demand and committed leadership. Our findings have important implications for other remote communities across the Boreal zone—especially those with nearby forest resources. Our examination of this case study ultimately highlights potential pathways for long-term success and, more specifically, shows how biomass resources might be best utilized through community-led initiatives to sustainably support energy security in Arctic communities.
Xeriscape for Urban Water Security: A Preliminary Study from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
(JSTOR, 2011) Smith, Brittany; Patrick, Robert J.
Xeriscape is a contemporary landscape maintenance term coined from the Greek xeros, meaning dry, and scape, from the Anglo-Saxon term schap, meaning view. The practice of xeriscape encompasses many landscape styles and materials to produce everything from lush gardens to desert-like landscapes. The purpose of xeriscape is to achieve low garden maintenance measured by less watering, less fertilizer and pesticides, less weeding and less mowing. The defining feature of xeriscape is how water is used with the goal of water efficiency through practices such as mulching, appropriate plant selection and landscape design. As urban regions in Canada look to enhance future water security what opportunities might there be in landscape conversions from mono-culture grass lawns to xeriscape? Using case study research in a Canadian prairie-region city, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, this research explores household motivation for xeriscape gardening. Through identification of household motivation for xeriscape, urban policy makers will be better able to design programs and incentives aimed at enhancing water security. The results of this research show that households with xeriscape landscaping were motivated mainly by factors related to landscape aesthetic and physical activity rather than water conservation.
Lessons Learned Through Community-Engaged Planning
(Scholarship@Western, 2017) Patrick, Robert J.; Machial, Laura; Quinney, Kendra; Quinney, Len
This article explores the potential for community-engaged planning to empower Indigenous communities to take ownership of planning and plan-making. We do this through a source water protection planning process with a First Nation community in Alberta, Canada. Access to safe drinking water for many First Nation communities in Canada remains problematic. Source water protection planning seeks to better integrate land and water management to prevent contamination of the drinking water supply. We employ a community-based planning initiative to develop a source water protection plan. While the planning initiative developed a successful drinking water protection plan it also served to built trust between the participants, respected traditional and Western values, as well as empowered the community. Lessons learned from this initiative are shared.
Adapting to Climate Change Through Source Water Protection: Case Studies from Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada
(Scholarship@Western, 2018) Patrick, Robert J.
The protection of drinking water sources continues to gain momentum in First Nation communities on the Canadian Prairie. Through the identification of potential threats to drinking water sources communities are taking action to mitigate those threats. This article explores the extent to which climate change has been taken into consideration in recent source water protection planning community exercises. In addition, this article describes how source water protection planning has potential to enhance community adaptation strategies to reduce the impacts of climate change on source water and drinking water systems. Results are based on six case studies from Alberta and Saskatchewan.

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