Project Title: CREATE Environmental Innovation

Project Leader: Murray Humphries

Project Focus: enhancing Canada's prosperity through innovative environmental assessment, monitoring and management.

How can northern resource development proceed while minimizing environmental impacts and maximizing community benefits?

A multidisciplinary graduate training program oriented around industrial, government, and indigenous engagement.

CREATE Environmental Innovation:Northern resource development

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CREATE Environmental Innovation:The collaborators…

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• 3 consulting firms• 7 industries• 2 NGOs

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• 5 territorial/provincial governments• 2 federal ministries

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• 5 indigenous organizations

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CREATE Environmental Innovation:The collaborators…

CREATE Environmental Innovation:The research and training…

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• Eye-opener courses• Complexity faced by environmental managers• Science-human value interface in resource management• Case-studies of actual area-based resource management issue • Challenges and skills required for effective resource assessment, management, and monitoring

• Core courses • Indigenous Rights & Engagement • Natural Resource Economics, Industry, & Regulation• Ecoinformatics, Data Analyses, & Experimental Design• Model Development & Scenarios

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The graduate training…

• Recruitment of northern and aboriginal students is a project priority

• Internships with industry, government, and aboriginal organizations

• Thesis-based research in environmental sciences

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The graduate training…

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team…

Nil Basu (Natural Resource Sc and CINE)

• Contamination of aquatic resources• Genetic susceptibilities to contaminant exposures amongst First Nations• Food safety and oil-contamination of traditional foods near oil sands• Toxic exposures amongst workers involved in informal mining and electronic waste recycling in Ghana

Elena Bennett (Natural Resource Sc)

• Changes in ecosystem service interactions in a changing North• Relationships between ecosystem service provision and livelihoods in northern communities• Comparisons of the ecosystem service interactions of 'working landscapes' in Canada's North with more well-studied southern working landscapes• Recovery of ecosystem services (and their interactions) after resource extraction

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team…

Jeff Cardille (Natural Resource Sc)

• Maintaining wildlife corridors in Canada's North• Dynamic assessments of land-use change from the Landsat record• Merging information from multiple remote sensors• Correspondence between estimated wildlife corridors and observed movements of target organisms

Jim Fyles (Natural Resource Sc)

• Forest functions and dynamics• Scientific knowledge, policy and forest management• Interrelationships between plants, soil, and disturbances• Functioning of complex ecological and socio-ecological systems across multiple scales

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team…

Jessica Head (Natural Resource Sc)

• Species susceptibility to toxic effects of oil contaminants• Molecular tools for ecological risk assessment• Birds as sentinels for environmental quality

Gordon Hickey (Natural Resource Sc)

• Sustainable natural resource management and policy of complex social-ecological systems• Resilience of natural resource-dependent communities, particularly of their food systems as a function of the social actors and institutions involved in governing resource use and stewardship• Northern indigenous communities’ benefits and engagement in natural sciences research

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team…

Murray Humphries (Natural Resource Sc and CINE)

• Impacts of northern resource development on traditional food security• Biologging wildlife to predict, assess, and mitigate the impacts of northern resource development• Contributions of wildlife co-management and participatory research to sustainable development

Chris Solomon (Natural Resource Sc)

• Ecological and social-ecological dynamics of fisheries• Fisheries management in the northern context• Carbon cycle processes in pristine and impacted northern lakes

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team…

Erin Bayne (Biological Sc)

• Cumulative ecological impacts of human activities on biodiversity• Wildlife behavioral, population, and community ecology• Ecological trade-off assessment• Inform and provide recommendations for biodiversity conservation

Stan Boutin (Biological Sc)

• Human- and climate-induced ecological changes and their effects on wildlife phenotypic plasticity, evolution and population dynamics• Provide decision-makers with the information and tools necessary to make ecologically-informed landuse decisions• Conservation issues related to human landuse and climate change

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team…

Mark Boyce (Biological Sc)

• Population-level mathematical and simulation models of ecological systems for wildlife conservation and management• Population viability analysis, resource selection functions, time series, and predator-prey models• Life history evolution and sexual selection of birds and mammals

Mark Lewis (Mathematical & Statistical Sc)

• Mathematical biology and spatial ecology• Modeling space use, population spread in biological invasions, optimal strategies for biocontrol, and the effect of habitat fragmentation on species survival

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team…

Evelyn Merrill (Biological Sc)

• Using remote sensing, GIS, and biotelemetry systems to study animal movement in heterogeneous landscapes• Foraging and nutritional ecology of ungulates, plant-herbivore interactions, and landscape modifications on wildlife populations• Linking small-scale processes to large-scale patterns in animal distribution and population dynamics

CREATE Environmental Innovation: The recruitment…

• Graduate students interested in northern resource development and environmental sustainability and in completing thesis research enhanced by coursework and internship experience with industry, government, and/or aboriginal organizations

• Once the candidate student-supervisor-project is identified:

• complete and submit admission form @

https://www.mcgill.ca/create-ei/files/create-ei/create_ei_admission_form_0.docx