Soil Research Assistant at Klondike Valley Nursery in Dawson City, Yukon
During this work term I have been working as an intern at Klondike Valley Nursery. So far this term I have completed many different tasks, from transplanting plants, fertilizing fruit bushes, watering plants and grafting apple trees. On top of working at the nursery, we are part of a study that is trying to better understand human relationships and connections with soil. I am excited to move into the next stage of projects which includes harvesting and picking berries from all the plants I have watched grow over the last couple months. Overall, throughout this Co-op term I have better developed my plant identification skills, understanding of plant and soil biology and allowed me to see new parts of the Yukon!
Touring Europe during one of the worst heat waves ever to hit the continent was both challenging and inspiring for the UBC Faculty of Forestry’s Master of Urban Forestry Leadership (MUFL) student group who went there in the summer of 2022 as part of their professional program.
Program Director Sara Barron vividly recalls the sobering reality of seeing the impact of climate change in countries like Italy, where drought was so apparent in places with legendary waterways like the River Po experiencing historical lows.
“We can lecture about these places but being there in person is infinitely more enriching,” says Barron who was one of the group’s guides and trip planning coordinator.
MUFL Europe Trip Includes Germany & Italy
Barron explains students who took part in the busy one-week tour covering Germany and Italy took full advantage of the trip’s many valuable experiential-learning opportunities. As they toured some of the world’s best examples of developed urban green space, they were commenting on everything from the amount of green vegetation accessible to all parts of urban populations to whether or not the deliberate positioning of urban trees factored in enough soil space to support root growth.
World-Class Urban Forestry Design Examples
Among the places visited during the trip was the world-renowned University of Padova which is the world’s fifth oldest surviving university – celebrating its 800th year in existence this year. Another was Freiburg in Germany a city that sits outside the Black Forest and has won numerous awards for its advanced environmental practices. The group even participated in a public art walk in Bosco Nordio – an ancient protected natural reserve that is located along Italy’s northeastern Venetian coast and overlooks the Adriatic Sea.
“By seeing world-class examples of pristine natural settings and urban forestry up close, students had an opportunity to reflect on these examples and consider incorporating these designs into their future careers.”
“I couldn’t believe what we were exposed to and what we got to do,” says Melone. “It just made the whole learning experience that much more inspired and motivating, and I am able to draw on everything we saw firsthand in my day-to-day work.”
Just like the other professional Master’s programs at UBC Forestry, the MUFL cohort can participate in an international tour of urban forestry destinations that can enhance the learning experience and foster community for an online cohort exponentially, says Barron.
Next year the hope is to plan another international overseas tour in May 2023 to Germany and the Netherlands.
This year, 16 students and their professors spent two days in Quesnel to give students the opportunity to speak with: land managers, small businesses, government reps from the local First Nations, the municipality, provincial government, as well as industry experts.
MIF Cohort from Many Parts of the Globe
“The field school gives students the opportunity to learn about the relationships between people and forests and how these influence economic development and ecological sustainability,” explains MIF program coordinator James Langston. “The group of students we had with us this time are from so many different parts of the world including the UK, China, India, Indonesia, Cameroon and El Salvador.”
Langston explains further the group’s collective research interests lie in strengthening their local economies while also ensuring a healthy relationship with the land.
“We have become particularly passionate about fostering innovation through small and medium forest enterprises; and exploring how inclusive decision-making between First Nation and non-First Nation peoples results in better land use practices,” Langston says further.
UBC Forestry Collaboration Helping With More Resilient & Innovative Economy
The MIF program is part of the larger UBC Vibrant Forest Landscapes Lab, which has been collaborating with the City of Quesnel since 2020 to support research focused on identifying policy constraints and opportunities for small tenure holders and secondary wood manufacturers in BC.
The collaborative work between the Forestry Initiatives Program and the UBC Vibrant Forest Landscapes Lab is reported to be helping Quesnel transition towards a resilient and innovative forest economy that aligns with broader goals of landscape management and reconciliation.
UBC Forestry is proud to announce the faculty’s Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee (JOHSC) received the 2022 award for Innovative Promotion of Safety Culture at this year’s UBC Safety Day.
About Forestry’s JOHSC
The Faculty of Forestry Safety Committee monitors the overall safety program within the faculty. This year, the committee spearheaded the modernization of the Field Safety Manual by improving the document, updating policies and procedures such as impacts of climate change, and making it available digitally. Additionally, they have taken the initiative to update the building protocols and signage in regard to the proper disposal of non-hazardous wastes such as laboratory glass and Styrofoam.
About the Award
The Innovative Promotion of Safety Culture Award is given annually to four safety teams or committees across the University. It is awarded to groups that have applied innovative and creative methods to promote safety culture, promote the safety committee team, provided safety assistance and/or address health and safety issues within their area of responsibility.
Orchard Health Research Assistant at BC Ministry of Forests in Vernon, BC
I have been working for the BC Ministry of Forests in the Kalamalka Seed Orchard. I have been working on exploring the potential for applying cover cropping into the orchard management strategy, surveying in cover crop trials to evaluate weed suppression potential and beneficial insect populations, as well as continuing surveys for beneficial insect biodiversity across several seed orchard sites. I have also been participating in general pest management and other maintenance activities in the orchard. I have enjoyed learning more about the importance of biodiversity in agricultural systems and am excited about the contributions I am making to improving orchard management in the province!
Undergraduate Research Assistant at UBC (Forest and Conservation Science) in Vancouver, BC
This summer, I have had the opportunity to work as a research assistant for the Forest Insect Disturbance Ecology Lab at UBC. I have been assisting the grad students with their research primarily on the alder bark beetle, its fungal symbiont, and its effects on red alder stands in the Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island. The field work I have been doing involves insect trap collections, external R-surveys, and finding newly attacked trees. I also have been gaining lab experience by doing DNA extractions and sample prep for qPCR assays for the fungus associated with the alder bark beetle.
Local Conference of Youth Canada (LCOY) 2022 – an event UBC Forestry is co-hosting with Human and Nature Youth Club and LCOY Canada – is expected to attract hundreds of attendees from across Canada and beyond.
About LCOY Canada 2022
Happening Oct. 22, 2022, online, LCOY Canada 2022 is a first-of-its-kind, free conference that is aimed at climate-action-motivated youth and their community supporters and mentors.
“It’s also happening shortly before the next COP27 conference so that we can ensure the discussions and recommended action items coming out of the conference are delivered to COP27 decision makers in a timely manner,” says UBC Forestry’s Dr. Anil Shrestha, an organizing committee member.
Key youth climate activists and influencers will be leading several workshops and seminars on themes that include climate justice, extreme weather and climate change, biodiversity and climate change impacts and building sustainable communities through local action.
Among the keynote speakers is UBC Forestry’s Dr. Stephen Sheppard who will present Green Design Strategies for Healthy, Climate-Resilient Cities.
Dr. Stephen Sheppard is a professor emeritus and director of the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP). His research focuses on climate change planning, outreach, and community engagement. Published in more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Sheppard is also the author of the book Visualizing Climate Change. He led UBC’s Research Cluster of Excellence on Cool Tools: Social Mobilization on Climate Change using Digital Tools and spearheaded many community-based climate solutions programs such as The Cool ‘Hoods Champs program. He continues to be in demand for speaking engagements and national media interviews.
Juliet Lu is an Assistant Professor with both the Faculty of Forestry and UBC’s School for Public Policy and Global Affairs. She is a political ecologist focused on the implications of China’s growing investments in land and other resources in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Tell us about yourself!
I’m a political ecologist and a global China scholar, and most of what I study centers on struggles over land and their larger social, environmental, and territorial implications. I’m an Assistant Professor in Forest Resources Management and in the School of Public Policy, and I was hired by the Interdisciplinary Biodiversity Solutions (IBioS) cluster for their qualitative social science position to focus on environmental governance and business.
Outside of work, I play ultimate frisbee and love cooking and complaining while losing to friends at Settlers of Catan. I also co-host a podcast called the Belt and Road Pod, which covers what I refer to as ‘grounded’ research on China’s growing engagements in the developing world.
Can you give us an overview of your research? What drew you to this work?
The core research questions I ask center on the political economy of the expansion of rubber plantations–what drives rubber expansion, who decides where and how it’s grown, who reaps the benefits (in terms of profit and power), etc. With time, my focus has shifted from the plantations themselves to the actors involved and power relations further down the supply chain. However, the greater questions I often run into relate to the world’s fixation on monoculture production, how we determine crop feasibility for sustainable growth, and whether China’s rise is causing shifts in dominant global structures (particularly with regard to development and environmental governance).
I became interested in these questions during the five years (2009-2013) I worked and lived in the Mekong Region before grad school. After college, I moved to Yunnan Province in Southwest China and worked as a translator and junior researcher for the World Agroforestry Centre. Here, I became fascinated with the transnational dynamics of environmental governance (e.g. how China’s logging ban was affecting Myanmar’s and Lao’s forests) and the push to expand tree crops (walnuts, tea, and rubber especially). I wanted to see how those dynamics looked on the other side of the border.
In 2012, I moved to Laos to work with the Centre for Development and Environment on an inventory of land investments. The work I did with them introduced many questions I couldn’t answer within the given project timelines and so I went back to school, setting me on the path towards landing here at UBC.
With the pressing urgency of the climate crisis, how does your research shed light on another approach/perspective to understanding our environmental issues?
Rubber has been identified as a primary driver of deforestation (and related carbon emissions from land change) in the Mekong Region, and indeed, much of the region’s lost forest has been replaced by rubber. I look at the rubber boom in comparison to other crop booms that have also driven mass deforestation, and I work with several groups asking how to prevent future forest loss from agricultural expansion. My research (and that of many others) shows that the drivers of crop booms – from policies that promote cash crops, to market signals, to struggles to claim territory and property – play out way above the heads of the individual land users cutting down the forest and planting rubber. This helps us understand why mitigation interventions that target specific locations often create leakage of emissions (i.e. farmers or land investors moving away from a protected location instead of deforesting it) instead of reducing them overall. As such, I think a focus on greater systemic factors – often referred to as indirect drivers, although I think they’re pretty direct! – that drive crop booms and deforestation is needed.
Can you share with us some of the most interesting things you’ve learned from your research on China’s growing demand for raw materials on land and natural resource management in Southeast Asia?
What tends to surprise folks (and surprised me) most is that Chinese actors have had far less success in acquiring land and extracting resources than most people assume. There was a lot of excitement (and fear) surrounding China’s rising interest in land in the 2000s, and with the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, China’s infrastructure investments also became a major focus. But China is very new to investing overseas and has faced a number of steep learning curves. Early narratives around China’s investment boom also ignored how important host country politics are. They overlooked the sensitivity of local communities and governments to land as the basis of their livelihoods, sovereignty, and identity. This is not a new story, nor a Chinese story – the tendency to view land and resources as commodities that are easy to disaggregate, buy, and exchange is widespread, and the tendency to forget their social and political entanglements is not uniquely Chinese.
What are you looking forward to most here at UBC?
I’m very grateful to find myself in such an interdisciplinary intellectual community as we have here at UBC, especially to be in departments that encourage applied work and collaborations beyond academia. Some of my new research I think really lends itself to working with folks outside my methodological wheelhouse – engaging colleagues who do land change science, who look at global economic trade policies and institutions, even those who might want to look more closely at rubber wood supply chains, for example. I’m also really excited to start teaching the fundamentals of political ecology in my graduate course (Resource Governance and the Corporation, FRST 578C 203) this spring, and in the longer term to connect students with the civil society organizations I work with in hopes of developing further research projects and advocacy outputs for my partners. Perhaps most importantly, I’m looking forward to getting out more and exploring BC’s incredible forests and the awesome food scene here in Vancouver!
Prof. Avramidis, Head of the Department of Wood Science, is acknowledged for his extensive work in the fields of wood physics and wood drying. A leading researcher in radio frequency vacuum drying and, in his field, Prof. Avramidis’ research has advanced wood sciences through the study of wood-water relationships, water sorption and diffusion, processes for non-destructive timber evaluation, and various wood drying methods. On top of his role as professor, Prof. Avramidis has authored close to 300 publications, held the role of reviewer for numerous scientific journals, publishers, research foundations, faculty, and departments, and is the elected President of the International Academy of Wood Science (IAWS) effective June 2023.
Linnaeus Academy Research Foundation will be presenting the award to Prof. Avramidis in an Oct. 20, 2022 award ceremony in Växjö, Sweden. Research groups at Linnaeus University are looking forward to long-term collaboration and advancements in the forestry and wood science fields alongside Prof. Avramidis.
About the Award
The Carola and Carl-Olof Ternryd Award is delegated by the Linnaeus Academy Research Foundation at Linnaeus University. This award has been given every two years since 2016. A portion of the award goes to the recipient and the other part goes to the Faculty of Technology at Linnaeus University to use for research collaboration projects.
About Linnaeus University
Linnaeus University is located in Växjö and Kalmar, Sweden. Its Faculty of Technology has a cutting-edge Department of Forestry and Wood Technology. With their campuses surrounded by some of the most important areas in Europe for forestry, they have an emphasis on sustainable use.
With single-use plastics on their way to being banned and the demand for recyclable and biodegradable materials growing as a result, UBC researchers are intensifying their efforts to find cost-effective, technically viable solutions.
A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from UBC Faculty of Forestry, Faculty of Applied Science and the university’s Bioproducts Institute undertook a comprehensive review that adds critical perspectives about packaging products most commonly used for disposable food packaging – which equates to the largest single demand for plastics globally.
“Over 40 percent of all industrial packaging is devoted to food wrapping and packaging with 40 percent of that packaging made from plastics, “says UBC Forestry professor Chunping Dai. “Knowing that this represents the biggest contributor to plastic waste, we wanted to carefully analyze moulded pulp fibres as an alternative to these plastic products to see how they rate against both bioplastics and petroleum plastics.”
Current Use of Moulded Pulp Fibres
Common sources of moulded pulp fibres include recycled fibres, wood and non-wood fibres. Moulded pulp product examples include egg and fruit trays, horticultural trays and industrial packaging for items such as electronics. For food packaging, virgin fibres are typically used, including those from sugar cane bagasse, wheat straw and bamboo fibres. These materials are replacing wood as the principal fibre source due to “their cost effectiveness, wide availability and rapid renewability,” explains Dai.
Many Bioplastics Are Non-Biodegradable
Bioplastics can be produced from renewable biomass sources such as corn starch, vegetable fats and oils or recycled food waste. They are considered a better environmental alternative to petroleum-based plastics; however, many challenges exist related to their end of life since many of them are not biodegradable, says Dr. Dai.
“Our review of existing literature confirmed that around half of all bioplastics produced are non-biodegradable and those that are biodegradable require tightly controlled processing conditions.”
In the recently published open-access paper Moulded pulp fibers for disposable food packaging: A state-of-the-art review, the group’s review analyzed the manufacturing of moulded pulp food packaging using non-wood fibres. Both the process and performance additives used in the production cycle and properties pertinent to this specific type of packaging were investigated.
The team’s findings concluded numerous challenges still exist for the moulded pulp food container industry.
“Despite all of the production advances that have been made, our study definitively shows there are still challenges to overcome,” adds co-author, Bioproducts Institute Scientific Director and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Bioproducts and fellow faculty member Dr. Orlando Rojas.
In the case of bioplastics, Rojas explains they too have evolved from previous forms but still cannot outpace the petroleum plastic market as they have a number of production challenges ranging from supply chain issues to the ongoing need for chemical performance additives including petroleum-based additives that tend to hamper recycling efforts.
To overcome these challenges and thereby improve market competitiveness for both bioplastics and fibre-based food packaging, Dai and the team are recommending more comprehensive municipal waste programs and proactive government policies be put into place and improvements be made to the current composting and recycling waste pathways. His team also recommends further evaluation of moulded pulp food container biodegradability and product development using different fibre mixes and non-toxic performance additives.
