FALL 2023 SEMINAR SERIES

Dr. Sam Anderson - School of Environmental Science, SFU

Dr. Sam Anderson has a BSc in Engineering Physics from the University of Alberta, specializing in nanoelectronic engineering, and has finished his PhD in Geophysics at UBC in 2022.  In his PhD, he used data analysis and deep machine learning to gain insights into the role of glaciers as modifiers of streamflow in Western Canada, including identifying the most vulnerable communities to the loss of glaciers.  Outside of research, he writes and publishes essays that explore the personal dimensions of climate change.

Self-formed channelized flows such as rivers, glaciers, and lava channels are found across the surface of the Earth and other planetary bodies in the solar system. These channels shape landscapes, and record information about the past, contained both in the network morphology itself and the sedimentary records they build.

Despite occurring in incredibly diverse environments, there are striking similarities in the geometry of self-formed channels, most importantly in their widths and slopes. Dr. Deal will present a theory of self-formed channel geometry which identifies how different kinds of self-formed channels are different, in what ways they are all similar, and allows for first-order estimates of channel geometry with very little information.

Dr. Eric Deal - Lecturer - ETH Zurich

Originally from Vancouver, Eric completed his bachelor’s degree in geophysics at UBC. Since then, he has studied surface processes while living abroad for the last 10 years, mostly in the European Alps.

What do kittens, ninjas, sly tricksters, and warriors have in common? Why, they are all mesocarnivores, of course! Mesocarnivores are majestic, enigmatic animals that have inspired storytellers for generations. With the help of our partners we are working to ensure that we can also tell their ecological stories.

This talk will delve into how we are integrating data from past and current telemetry studies with observational data to predict how local fisher (Pekania pennanti) populations may respond to changes caused by management decisions (e.g., trapping closures, forest harvesting, and wildfire).

Dr. Joanna Burgar - Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, BC

Joanna’s interest is wildlife interactions across human influenced landscapes, particularly the use of applied ecology and adaptive management to conserve biodiversity. Joanna has extensive experience working with terrestrial mammals, ranging from the furry fliers (bats), spirits of the dead (lemurs), and Canadian icons (caribou), and has dipped her toes in the marine world doing a stint as a leatherback turtle research supervisor in Grenada, West Indies.

She did her BSc at UVic, MSc at Oxford, PhD at Murdoch Uni (Australia), and a post-doc at UVic and UBC, with focuses on resource management, conservation biology, and restoration (wildlife) ecology. Joanna appreciates the interconnectedness of species interactions and likes to use novel approaches and funky stats to determine how shifts in species abundance and community composition vary across landscapes.