Research at GEM

Climate change is a major research focus at Waterloo, covering all aspects including policy development and analysis, physical impacts of climate change, as well as mitigation and adaptation more broadly. Some of our faculty have been involved with climate change research since the 1980s and several have worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as contributing authors or expert reviewers over the past 15 years.

GEM professors who conduct research in this area include:

• Sarah Burch:
  • Governing responses to climate change (both adaptation and mitigation) in urban spaces
  • Exploring triggers of transitions toward more sustainable development pathways, and strategies for engaging a variety of actors in conversations about desirable futures
• Brent Doberstein:
  • Resource and environmental management in developing countries.
• Christine Dow:
  • Glacier hydrology and ice dynamics using methods including numerical modeling and insitu data collection
  • Ice sheets and valley glaciers
  • Assessing the impact of a warming climate on global ice masses
• Claude Duguay:
  • Extraction of geophysical parameters from optical and microwave imagery
  • Development and improvement of numerical ice growth and heat transfer models
  • Climate variability and change using lake ice and snow as indicators
• Susan Elliot:
  • Medical geography, with primary research foci in the area of environment and health, the global environment, urban social geography, and philosophy and method in the social sciences.
• Chris Fletcher:
  • Climate modelling, impact of climate change on atmospheric circulation patterns over Canada, the U.S. and Europe, on timescales ranging from seasons to decades.
• Richard Kelly:
  • Remote sensing of the cryosphere, especially snow and ice environments, using ground, aircraft and satellite earth observation data.
• Merrin Macrae:
  • Biogeochemical cycling in natural and impacted systems (agriculture, wetlands, forest) under variable climatic regimes and following disturbance or land use change.
• Richard Petrone:
  • Developing a further understanding of soil – vegetation – atmosphere interactions, especially as influenced by hydrologic and climatic conditions.
• Derek Robinson:
  • Land use, land management, and the carbon cycle
  • Agent-based modelling as an approach to integrate GIS, ecological, and human decision-making models to evaluate socio-economic contexts and policy scenarios on changes to land use and land cover, ecological function and the provision of ecosystem services, and human well-being.
• Michelle Rutty:
  • Tourism and environmental change
  • Virtual Reality (VR) to advance sustainability and climate action
• Steffanie Scott:
  • ways of knowing and being to reconnect with the web of life, each other, and ourselves
  • nature connection, relational education, learning from the land / place-based learning
  • contemplative and embodied practices (e.g., learning circles)
  • community food systems, agroecology, regenerative agriculture
• Daniel Scott:
  • Climate change impacts and adaptation, in particular the effects of climate change on tourism and recreation
  • Protected areas and biodiversity conservation
• Johanna Wandel:
  • Human dimensions of global change
  • Adaptation to climate change
  • Vulnerability
  • Drought management
  • Agriculture and climate change

GEM professors who conduct research in this area include:

• Daniel Cockayne:
  • Perspectives from cultural, economic, feminist geography, and contemporary social theory and philosophy. This includes how people manage and conceptualize their work in the context of 'new media' startup firms that develop websites and applications for smartphones and tablets.
• Peter Deadman:
  • Natural resources management
  • Common pool resources
  • Modeling and simulation
  • Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Brent Doberstein:
  • Resource and environmental management in developing countries.
• Susan Elliott:
  • Medical geography, with primary research foci in the area of environment and health, the global environment, urban social geography, and philosophy and method in the social sciences.
• Peter Johnson:
  • Develop and evaluate several geospatial technologies, including agent-based models (ABM), geographic information systems (GIS), and the Geospatial Web 2.0 (Geoweb), determining how they can be used to facilitate better planning decisions.
• Sanjay Nepal:
  • Exploring the links between biodiversity conservation and tourism, particularly in areas of resolving conflicts between wildlife agencies and local communities, tourism impacts on the environment (in parks and protected areas, and remote communities), community participation, and local level development through tourism.
  • Nepal, Thailand and Western Canada
• Daniel Scott:
  • Climate change impacts and adaptation, in particular the effects of climate change on tourism and recreation
  • Protected areas and biodiversity conservation
• Steffanie Scott:
  • ways of knowing and being to reconnect with the web of life, each other, and ourselves
  • nature connection, relational education, learning from the land / place-based learning
  • contemplative and embodied practices (e.g., learning circles)
  • community food systems, agroecology, regenerative agriculture
• Johanna Wandel:
  • Human dimensions of global change
  • Adaptation to climate change
  • Vulnerability
  • Drought management
  • Agriculture and climate change
• Nancy Worth:
  • Feminist economic geography
  • (Un)paid work, housing, precarity, social reproduction, inequalities, age and generations, and feminist theory

GEM professors who conduct research in this area include:

• Christine Dow:
  • Glacier hydrology and ice dynamics using methods including numerical modeling and insitu data collection
  • Ice sheets and valley glaciers
  • Assessing the impact of a warming climate on global ice masses
• Claude Duguay:
  • Extraction of geophysical parameters from optical and microwave imagery
  • Development and improvement of numerical ice growth and heat transfer models
  • Climate variability and change using lake ice and snow as indicators
• Chris Fletcher:
  • Climate modelling, impact of climate change on atmospheric circulation patterns over Canada, the U.S. and Europe, on timescales ranging from seasons to decades.
• Grant Gunn:
  • Remote sensing of freshwater ice (optical, active/passive microwave), high performance computing and cloud computing
  • Ground, airborne and spaceborne sensors (new technology - sensor constellations)
  • Tracking and physical variable retrieval   within the Cryosphere using new technology and techniques.
• Richard Kelly:
  • Remote sensing of the cryosphere, especially snow and ice environments, using ground, aircraft and satellite earth observation data.
• Yuri Leonenko:
  • Global warming
  • Climate control
  • Development of technologies for greenhouse gas reduction
• Merrin Macrae:
  • Biogeochemical cycling in natural and impacted systems (agriculture, wetlands, forest) under variable climatic regimes and following disturbance or land use change.
• Richard Petrone: 
  • Developing a further understanding of soil – vegetation – atmosphere interactions, especially as influenced by hydrologic and climatic conditions.
• Mike Stone:
  • Sediment/water interactions
  • River ecology and restoration
  • Drainage basin hydrology
• Maria Strack:
  • Interactions between ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry and soil properties in wetland ecosystems. In particular, feedbacks between wetlands and climate by investigating controls on peatland greenhouse gas exchange in natural, disturbed and restored ecosystems.
• Wesley Van Wychen:

  • Remote Sensing of glaciers and sea ice

  • Remote sensing of oceans (oil spills and currents)

  • Climate Data Rescue

  • Data stewardship of environmental data

GEM professors who conduct research in this area include:

• Peter Deadman:
  • Natural resources management
  • Common pool resources
  • Modeling and simulation
  • Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Claude Duguay:
  • Extraction of geophysical parameters from optical and microwave imagery
  • Development and improvement of numerical ice growth and heat transfer models
  • Climate variability and change using lake ice and snow as indicators
• Grant Gunn:

  • Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere (optical, microwave) pertaining to freshwater (snow and ice)

  • Thermodynamic modeling of ice, Radiative Transfer Modeling (microwave)

  • Application of Geographic Information Systems/Science for Geophysical parameter retrieval in the Arctic

• Peter Johnson:
  • Develop and evaluate several geospatial technologies, including agent-based models (ABM), geographic information systems (GIS), and the Geospatial Web 2.0 (Geoweb), determining how they can be used to facilitate better planning decisions.
• Suzanne Kearns:
  • Human factors and education within the aviation industry
  • E-learning in aviation
  • Competency-based education in aviation
  • International aviation
  • Aviation safety
  • Safety management systems
• Richard Kelly:
  • Remote sensing of the cryosphere, especially snow and ice environments, using ground, aircraft and satellite earth observation data.
• Derek Robinson:
  • Land use, land management, and the carbon cycle
  • Agent-based modelling as an approach to integrate GIS, ecological, and human decision-making models to evaluate socio-economic contexts and policy scenarios on changes to land use and land cover, ecological function and the provision of ecosystem services, and human well-being.
• Su-Yin Tan:
  • Geomatics and spatial data analysis with diverse application areas within both physical and human geography.