This summer, I have had the opportunity to work as an Environmental Programs Co-op at Destination Canada (DC), the Crown Corporation with the mandate to support Canadian tourism. DC strives to be an industry leader in climate action through their commitment to a regenerative approach to tourism, moving past sustainability to support Canadian communities by using tourism as a force for good. My job is to contribute to this commitment through learning new ways to develop our environmental initiatives, teaching staff about new ways to reach net zero carbon emissions and supporting DC in committing to high-level declarations and challenges to pursue climate action.
My main role at DC has been to research for, create, and publish a Climate Action Plan. This plan is underpinned by becoming a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration for Sustainable Tourism, developed by United Nations Tourism, committing to Canada’s Net Zero Challenge, and receiving an invitation to the Canadian Government’s Greening Government Group throughout the duration of my co-op term. This Climate Action Plan will be the first of ongoing annual plans that provide a comprehensive overview of DC’s current and future climate action initiatives. I have been able to work with the various business units at DC to determine how we can bolster the current climate work being done through attending national tourism sustainability sessions, leading company-wide sustainability meetings, and researching the work being done by industry leaders to further industry wide climate action goals.
I have been incredibly grateful for the opportunity to write DC’s first ever Climate Action Plan and am looking forward to publishing this plan to showcase the incredible work we have done this summer to demonstrate our commitment to leading the tourism industry as changemakers in regenerative tourism.
Forestry Management Assistant; City of Mississauga
To me, co-op is about gaining new experiences, continuously learning, and making long-lasting connections with peers. At the City of Mississauga, I am able to do all of the above through different events and cross-training. I have been working as a Forestry Management Assistant (FMA) with the Forestry Planning and Permits team under the Forestry Department. My daily duties include from inspecting and approving dead tree permits, releasing tree security deposits, and conducting TPZ inspections for pools to ensure that both public and private trees are protected. Although my main focus is in by-law, all the FMAs have the opportunity for cross-training with other teams.
I was assigned to help with tree inventory for the Forestry Capital Delivery team, where I used ArcGIS Field Maps and Trimble to determine tree location with an accuracy of up to 2 cm. We were also invited to various training sessions and events, such as learning about soil cells with landscape architects, visiting goats grazing on invasive species, and chainsaw training for removing hazardous trees after major storms. Despite some minor challenges and unexpected events, it has been a very fulfilling work term, and I hope to do more things with the City of Mississauga for my next work term!
Bio-economy Co-op Student; Ministry of Forests, Indigenous Bioeconomy and Innovation Branch
This summer I have been working as a Bioeconomy Co-op student with the Indigenous Bioeconomy and Innovation (IBIO) branch within the Ministry of Forests. My role involves contributing to the transformation of British Columbia’s Forest sector from low value, high volume to high value, low volume production through innovative fiber-based products. This opportunity allows me to witness firsthand the province’s collaborative efforts with academia and industry to drive innovation in the sector.
A significant achievement of mine involves developing a business case for lignin carbon fiber, a key biomaterial application of lignin, and gaining skills in statistical and economic analysis. I am leveraging government connections by partnering with UBC for a technoeconomic analysis on lignin carbon fibers, directly supporting my business case. Furthermore, I have opportunities to visit UBC’s Bioproducts Institute to learn about the newest cutting-edge biomaterial research projects that we are funding.
Additionally, I am currently involved in organizing the Forest Innovation and Bioeconomy conference, where I contribute as a member of the organizing committee. This role includes liaising with venues and stakeholders to ensure the event’s success. Through my Co-op experience, I have effectively applied knowledge gained from the BEST program to practical scenarios, such as reviewing business cases, project proposals, and engaging with industry leaders in the bioeconomy.
This story originally appeared on the UBC Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies website.
Smoke from the Churn Creek Fire drifts over a long-dormant campfire pit at SXFN’s Big Bar Guest Ranch. An evacuation alert was issued for SXFN communities because of this fire. Photo courtesy: Mike Stefanuk.
Universities have largely benefited from an extractive model of research on Indigenous communities. In decades past researchers would visit Indigenous communities to conduct their research, and publish their results afterwards – often without consulting with the community, providing a chance for review, or providing copies of the data or final publication to the community. This extractive model of research can often make Indigenous communities wary of new community partnerships with universities and students in general.
But in the age of reconciliation, we need to switch to a new model, where communities are consulted, and relationships are reciprocal, ethical and not extractive. One where Indigenous Peoples can choose the types of research projects that are important to them and determine how they want to collaborate.
Mike Stefanuk stands next to a fire-scarred Douglas-fir tree, which has survived at least five fires in its lifetime. Trees like this hold the history of SXFN cultural burns and wildfires. Photo courtesy: Jonathan Garsson.
Mike Stefanuk is a PhD candidate in Forestry, working in the Tree Ring Lab under the supervision of Dr. Lori Daniels. Mike, Lori, and Master’s student Georgina Preston partnered with Stswecem’c Xget’tem First Nation (SXFN) on wildfire research.
Like much of British Columbia, the aggressive wildfires of recent years have threatened SXFN, and SXFN citizens are concerned about wildfire risk to their communities. SXFN and Tree Ring Lab researchers partnered to research wildfire risk on SXFN traditional territory.
“This research is critical to community safety and validating, through the Western [science] lens, what community has known since time immemorial, for the need to manage the landscape for all sorts of features” says Kateri Koster, the Special Projects Advisor in the SXFN Stewardship Department.
“The motivator for us to collectively come together and start a research project was to look at wildfire risk questions and other issues around wildfire and try to support SXFN in addressing wildfire risk,” Mike explains.
The SXFN lands near Canoe Creek, BC – in the Cariboo Region – have seen their share of wildfires. Approximately 1/5 of SXFN Traditional Territory has burned in wildfires over the last 15 years. But these lands have a long history with fire, including a history of Indigenous fire stewardship and cultural burning by SXFN, which had many benefits for the people, lands, waters, and wildlife.
One of the challenges that SXFN currently faces is the distinction between reserve lands and crown lands. While SXFN has the authority to manage and steward their reserves, they are restricted from practicing traditional stewardship on the crown lands near their homes. Kateri says this research “gives SXFN the ability to substantiate the critical need for wildfire mitigation NOW and supports SXFN to push back against current BC policy.”
Mike’s role in the project is to study SXFN’s wildfire history. He uses dendrochronology – tree-ring science – to reconstruct past fire events and gain insights into the history of fires around SXFN. Through his research, he acknowledges the significance of traditional Indigenous cultural fire use and land stewardship practices in SXFN’s history.
Mike takes research samples from fire-scarred living and dead trees. These can be as small as a pencil or as large as a coffee table and show that trees can be remarkably fire resistant – some surviving more than 10 fires in their lifetime. These fire scars may be from wildfires or from SXFN cultural burns, also known as ‘good fire’.
“I’m interested in how the large forest ecosystem functions – what are the processes at work? Why are forests the way they are?” Mike says this historical information on past fire events from tree rings and fire scars is helpful, but just looking to the trees for human history would not tell the full story of fire around SXFN. To learn this history, he had to start off in a good way.
The Flat Lake megafire – smoke visible in the background – burned almost 74,000ha of forest in SXFN traditional territory. Photo courtesy: Mike Stefanuk.
Looking at wildfire management and stewardship in SXFN traditional territory required several accommodations to ensure that the project met everyone’s needs. “As a scientist, I have to acknowledge my positionality. I am a settler, western, coming in from the outside. If I show up and start asking a bunch of personal questions, [it evokes] that history of [Indigenous] suppression,” says Mike.
The research team and SXFN negotiated an Indigenous research protocol agreement – an agreement that many First Nations, Inuit and Métis organizations use with external researchers. “It outlined the principles of respectful research, ownership control and access and possession of data, and how [researchers] will conduct themselves in this relationship with SXFN,” Mike explains. This agreement ensures that SXFN is able to access, help develop, and provide feedback on research all the way through the process to ensure that sensitive information and knowledge are protected.
Mike says having some humility is important for students, particularly in working with Indigenous communities. “If you’re coming in as an outsider, you are going to make mistakes.” SXFN was very welcoming and open to him, providing him with a chance to do better when needed. “I don’t think anyone should be expected to do [Indigenous-partnered research] perfectly when they first try, but learning from mistakes is the best way to do better.”
Another consideration for students is the start and end date of their research. Coming into an Indigenous community, getting to know people, setting up relationships, and building trust takes time. Being mindful of the communities’ needs is also important as ongoing work; cultural events or community initiatives may dictate the timelines for their involvement in projects.
Mike encouraged students to consider how to stay in touch after they are done a given research project. “The more satisfying relationship is to stay around longer,” says Mike. Staying in connection with communities after the research increases accountability for positive and negative research impacts and helps to make research more meaningful. “I hope to stay in touch after the PhD is done.”
There can also be a process of ‘unlearning’ or ‘reshaping’ as you begin to see things from a community’s perspective. Though fear and destruction are often at the forefront when thinking about fire, Mike explains that fire can be many things. “There’s all these different values when we [talk about] fire stewardship and what that brings to the land.” What can be viewed from a Western perspective as a disturbance to the land may also be a really important process for regeneration.
“Fortunately and unfortunately (because Secwépemc [and] SXFN knowledge should be held up and given the same weight as Western knowledge [and] science) research projects like this enable SXFN to ‘speak the same language’ as external audiences – like BC and the pubic,” explains Kateri. “Research projects like this provide SXFN [with] the content [and] subject matter to communicate effectively to community, BC, external audiences, public etc. about the degree of [wildfire] risk and the need for prevention and mitigation.”
Mike says that some of his favourite memories of his PhD journey thus far are times gathered around a fire just talking to SXFN community members. “I have learned much more than I would have without working alongside SXFN, and I am very grateful to them for openly welcoming me onto their lands. I will see this work as a success if the science we create can support SXFN in stewarding their lands according to their traditions, for their benefit and safety.”
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Mike Stefanuk is a PhD candidate of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) under the Faculty of Forestry and a UBC Public Scholar. Learn more about his research.
Paul Hessburg is a Senior Research Ecologist with USDA-Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, and affiliate Full Professor at UW, OSU, WSU, UBC. He is the 2022-2026 President of the International Association for Fire Ecology (AFE) and Distinguished Scientist USDA, International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America, and AFE. His research explores wildfire and climate change effects on landscape and wildfire dynamics, and the structure and organization of historical, current, and future landscape resilience.
How attribution science can explain the rising number and intensity of floods in BC
Prof. Younes Alila
Devastating floods have become an increasingly common part of life in British Columbia. In the late 1990s, BC’s Cariboo region experienced numerous floods and landslides. The ‘flood of the century’ happened in fall 2003 when hundreds of Squamish and Paradise Valley residents were forced to evacuate their homes. Later, a 2018 flood event in Grand Forks caused extensive damage, impacting more than 400 homes, farms and businesses. In 2021, successive atmospheric rivers in BC’s Pacific north-west caused billions of dollars in damage from catastrophic flooding and triggered landslides that killed five people.
Urban encroachment on floodplains and climate change are partly to blame. However, they cannot fully account for a trend that has many researchers, including UBC Forestry Prof. Younes Alila, ringing alarm bells. Through scientific inquiry and the application of a framework known as attribution science, Younes’s investigations have revealed important data on the root causes of more frequent and severe flooding in the province.
The science of attribution
Attribution science has traditionally been applied to climate change research to analyze whether or not extreme weather events can be traced back to a single cause.
Climate change attribution has made significant advances in recent years, but has rarely been applied to extreme events, such as major floods. These events often involve complex interactions that make it hard to identify a single cause.
Using historical data, Younes and his team have been able to link more frequent and severe flooding to areas with substantial forest cover loss at their headwaters — highlands from which tributaries flow.
“People living in these areas consistently find themselves on flood watch, indicating that certain regions of the province are regularly at risk of flooding,” says Younes. “It appears as if these compromised watersheds have exceeded their resilience threshold, making them unable to withstand flooding events any longer.”
Land use changes often associated with urbanization, agricultural practices, mining and various other activities also contribute to soil instability and displacement that can increase the risk of severe flooding. Similarly, landscape hydrology can be altered by changes to forest cover from clearcut logging, beetle infestations or wildfires, as can flood management policies that heavily rely on downstream infrastructure to hold back rising water levels, such as dykes, bridges and culverts, Younes concludes.
“It is important to consider the causes behind why some areas have become community flooding hotspots,” states Younes. “While government agencies and the public often attribute these events to global warming, other equally significant, or potentially more impactful, factors are exacerbating the risk of these extremes.”
Attribution Science Defined
According to Certified Consulting Meteorologist, Jim Foerster, the emerging study of attribution science involves the analysis of causal links between climate change and extreme weather events, such as heat domes, forest fires, floods and atmospheric rivers. To date, several published research papers have drawn connections between extreme weather events and the effects of human-caused climate change from the emission of greenhouse gasses from such things as the burning of fossil fuels, states Jim in a 2023 Forbes article. For example, research found that climate change-related stressors significantly increased the amount of rainfall during the Category 4 Hurricane Harvey that hit southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana in 2017.
A flood of legal action
When it comes to flooding and the application of attribution science, the public, including legal authorities and insurance companies, is taking notice.
In 2015, Younes served as an expert witness in a case involving a BC rancher who successfully secured a settlement against a forestry company that had clear-cut logged near the rancher’s home. The prosecution argued that the logging had significantly and detrimentally altered the water flow in a nearby creek, leading to flooding that decimated 35 hectares of the rancher’s lands. For a 2022 provincial court case, Younes drafted a 70-page report that outlined how clear-cut logging and other activities had likely contributed to two instances of flooding within six years at a couple’s acreage south of Smithers, BC. The $300,000 settlement that the couple received from the province made headline news across the country and in other parts of the world.
Younes is currently working on providing expert testimony for another ongoing court case in BC where clear-cut logging is in question.
Solutions require new ways of thinking
With much of the province’s landscape affected by climate and land-use changes — including forest cover loss — mitigation and management solutions are urgently needed.
“It all starts with a fundamental shift in mindset,” says Younes. “Logging practices within the province’s Timber Supply Areas need to be updated in favour of abandoning clear-cut logging for biodiverse-friendly, restorative practices, including selective, strip-cut and small-patch logging.”
“We must synchronize our flood management strategy in the more populated lowlands with our land use, forest resources and water resources management policies in the uplands.”
A concerted effort among different levels of government, as well as non-governmental leaders and industry, is needed now to make a meaningful contribution to addressing some of the root causes of flood risk, adds Younes.
in the Spring 2024 issue of Branchlines Magazine. View the full issue here.
Here’s a look at UBC Forestry in the media this month
B.C. landslide blocks Chilco sockeye access to spawning ground, threatening the hearty ‘superfish’ Forestry professor Dr. Scott Hinch discussed the impacts of rising water temperatures on Pacific salmon. Globe and Mail (subscription)
Extreme heat is a huge killer — these local approaches can keep people safe Forestry professor Dr. Melissa McHale weighed in on local approaches to keep people safe and cool in extreme heat. Nature
Dry conditions, lightning contributed to Alberta’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season: study Forestry professor Dr. Lori Daniels said large fires are more likely when weather conditions are hot and dry and when there are extended droughts. CBC News via Yahoo
Dangerous embers from Dunbar fire blew 1.5 km into Pacific Spirit Park Forestry professor Dr. Lori Daniels said there is fire risk in urban forests near heavily populated areas. Postmedia via Vancouver Sun, The Province, Prince George Post
Logging after wildfires is a hot industry in B.C. Could it do more harm than good? Forestry professor Dr. Christopher Gaston commented on B.C.’s logging industry. The Narwhal
The threat of climate change demands something more than thoughts, prayers and excuses Forestry professor Dr. Lori Daniels said local communities need to build up their research and expertise so that they’re better equipped to manage the forests around them. CBC News via Yahoo
‘A huge risk:’ How this longtime B.C. forestry family pivoted from sawmill to meet the growing demand for mass timber construction Forestry professor emeritus Dr. Gary Bull said B.C.’s forest tenure system, which gives individuals rights to harvest timber, needs serious reform. Postmedia via Vancouver Sun, The Province
Canada’s 2023 wildfires released almost 10 years worth of carbon dioxide in one of the world’s worst fire seasons, report finds Media mentioned research by forestry professor Dr. Lori Daniels which found that wildfire emissions can be two to three times larger than that emitted from industry and human activity, provided that the reporting from industry is accurate. The Globe and Mail
Why massive swarms of moths appear in summer in Thompson-Okanagan Forestry professor Dr. Allan Carroll explained why swarms of moths appear in the summer. iNFO News
Effects of landslide on salmon population Forestry professors Drs. Scott Hinch and John Richardson discussed how the Chilcotin River could affect fish populations. Dr. Hinch: CKNW Jas Johal Show, Dr. Richardson: Tri-Cities Dispatch
Climate change could return a stolen lake to Indigenous people, a century later UBC forestry scientists, members of the Sumas First Nation and other partners co-authored a study which recommended allowing B.C.’s Sumas Prairie to revert to a lake. Mongabay UBC News coverage
‘I could feel the heat’: Dunbar fire evacuee recalls massive Vancouver blaze Forestry professor Dr. Felix Wiesner said buildings that are built with wood are at higher risk of fire breaking out during construction. CityNews Vancouver
Metro Van is losing trees. That means a hotter future Forestry professor Dr. Lorien Nesbitt said efforts to expand tree canopies in Vancouver need to pay attention to inequities. The Tyee
Dr. Eduardo Pablo Cappa holds a PhD (2007) in agricultural sciences from the School of Agronomy, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a quantitative forest geneticist and his main research areas are mixed linear models, statistical methods, and quantitative genetics and genomics for evaluation of forest trees.
I am a molecular ecologist working as a Research Scientist at the Hakai Institute. My research focus is on ecological, environmental, and ancient genomics. I am passionate about science and education and I have worked in the field of ecological genetics and wildlife conservation for over 15 years.
I work with partners in academia, government, and non-governmental organizations in Canada and the United States to understand how environmental factors, including human influences, shape ecosystems and the evolutionary trajectory of wildlife. My primary interest is in applying genomics tools, in combination with traditional ecological approaches and community knowledge, to answer questions that will help inform and shape conservation policy.
