Geography

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Open Access
A Paleolimnological Investigation into the Ecological Impacts of Permafrost Thaw Slumping on Cladocerans (Branchiopoda, Crustacea) in the Mackenzie Delta Region (Northwest Territories, Canada)
(2021-11-15) Auger, Bradley Matthew; Korosi, Jennifer
This thesis explores the ecological impacts of retrogressive thaw slumping on cladocerans (Branchiopoda, Crustacea) in Mackenzie Delta Region (Northwest Territories, Canada) lakes using paleolimnological techniques to answer the following questions: 1) Does thaw slumping increase UV exposure of Chydorus? 2) Are Daphnia absent in slump-affected lakes? I reconstructed UV exposure of Chydorus in a reference and slump-affected lake by measuring carapace absorbances at UV wavelengths. Carapace absorbances in the slump-affected lake were comparable to the reference lake, indicating Chydorus were not exposed to more UV radiation than in the reference lake. I also examined Daphnia ephippia in surface and pre-1850 sediments from 7 slump-affected and 7 unimpacted lakes, to confirm a 2017 zooplankton survey observation that Daphnia were absent in slump-affected lakes. Daphnia were not observed in slump-impacted lake sediments; however low sediment volumes likely underestimate Daphnia presence. My research provides new information on zooplankton biogeography in the Mackenzie Delta region.
Open Access
A Pan-Canadian Comparison of Cyanobacteria Bloom Management Policies, Programs, and Practices
(2022-03-03) Gasman, Rebecca; Molot, Lewis
Across the globe, reports of cyanobacteria blooms are on the rise. The increasing occurrence of cyanobacteria blooms and cyanotoxins is attributed to phosphorous (P) loading, climate change, among a mix of other factors. While eutrophic lakes have a higher risk of blooms, oligotrophic and mesotrophic lakes are also experiencing blooms. This means governments need to develop a robust cyanobacteria management strategy (prevent, control, and mitigate) to protect public health. In Canada, water management is a shared responsibility among the federal, provincial, and local governments; however, cyanobacteria management is mainly a provincial and local government responsibility. This research compares and contrasts five provincial cyanobacteria management strategies from Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. Using a policy analysis framework, the methods of data collection include a review of grey and academic literature, legislation/regulations, and interviews with actors involved in cyanobacteria bloom management in each province. Also, three case studies Lake Erie, Ontario; Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Pigeon Lake, Alberta were selected to analyze the policies and programs in practice. A robust cyanobacteria management strategy involves prevention, control, and mitigation to avoid public health risks. All jurisdictions in Canada have initiatives to manage cyanobacteria blooms. Nutrient management continues to be the cornerstone of bloom prevention by controlling point and diffuse sources of P runoff control. Nutrient management mostly relies on voluntary participation, so reductions in nutrient loading are heavily dependent on financial incentives, and education and outreach programs; however, there is little to no understanding or tracking of implementation. Also, P control will not reduce the risk of blooms in low P lakes. Monitoring programs and targets should include dissolved oxygen. Public health risks associated with cyanotoxins are mitigated through public reporting or monitoring drinking water sources and recreational waters. The monitoring and reporting programs vary by province. For instance, certain drinking water sources and recreational waterbodies are routinely monitored, whereas in other provinces sampling is driven by public reporting.
Open Access
A patina of sustainability: Corporate social responsibility and large-scale copper mining in Solwezi, Zambia
(2023-12-08) Dvoretskiy, Vladimir; Zalik, Anna
The Kansanshi mine in Solwezi, Zambia is one of the largest copper-gold mines in Africa by output. Since 2005, the mine has been operated by First Quantum Minerals Ltd (FQM), establishing it as the largest Canadian-owned mining asset in Africa. The study aims to understand the influence of FQM's corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies on social and spatial relations within the local community, as well as the environmental and land use impacts of these policies. By examining the decision-making processes behind the CSR interventions, the research sheds light on the extractivist nature of sustainability in large-scale mining operations. Drawing on the corporate imperialism theory, the research suggests that an appearance of stakeholder well-being becomes crucial for the corporate vision of sustainability, turning the pursuit of a social license to operate into a form of extraction itself.
Open Access
An Everyday Approach to Agritourism Production in Southern Ontario
(2016-09-20) Dupej, Susan Lynne; Tufts, Steven
This dissertation is a nuanced interpretation of the production of space in the context of agritourism in Southern Ontario. It uses everyday life as a theoretical framework to expand conceptualizations of tourism production by enabling a discussion of how cultural practice is central to economic activity. I use agritourism to show how, in addition to being an important economic activity, tourism production is a culturally informed process with intrinsic value concerned with home and family, and contributes to individual utility, self-worth, identity and well-being for the tourism producer. In Southern Ontario, Agritourism has grown in popularity in the past thirty years. It is well-known as an economic diversification strategy but needs to be better understood as a cultural practice involving the social relations and everyday interactions of individual life contexts. I argue that the everyday reveals the production logic of well-being that is not necessarily based on an economic mentality but on the day-to-day negotiation of the home as a private place of residence, a place of work, and a tourism attraction open to the public. The question driving this dissertation is: to what extent does the everyday reveal alternative forms of production related to agritourism that are not necessarily driven by profit but by achieving a greater sense of well-being? At the heart of the research is an intimate knowledge of the farmers experience. I investigated these experiences by way of participant observation and semi-structured conversational style interviews. In addition to completing 27 interviews with a total of 32 self-employed people involved in operating/managing/running small to medium-large, and relatively large sized agritourism operations/businesses, I visited 16 agritourism attractions as an agritourist. An everyday approach shows that emotional well-being is a success factor in the production process, which points to agritourism as more than an economic activity. Adaptation, personal growth, family bonds and legacy, emotional connections, value systems, and protecting the privacy of the home are non-economic characteristics of tourism production that are about the embodied doings of day-to-day tasks that keep the destination running in the long term by preserving the well-being of the farmer and his/her family.
Open Access
An Experiment Assessing the Potential for Compost-Amended Lawn Topsoil to Inhibit Storm Quickflow
(2017-07-27) Porteous, Daniel Philip; Bello, Richard
Urbanisation creates immense challenges for the environment due to increasing impervious surface coverage enhancing quickflow discharge in the catchment. This makes increasing surface infiltration and soil water retention in urban areas a matter of high importance. Lawns, forming a substantial fraction of suburban space, are a potentially useful medium in this regard. Four lawn test plots were constructed by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) to examine the usefulness of increased topsoil depth and organic matter content (using compost) in improving soil characteristics and limiting quickflow discharge from lawns. Results indicated each lawn met TRCA-recommended soil guidelines, but the addition of compost did not produce discernable decreases in quickflow discharge, although infiltration rates were substantially increased. However, several limitations to the TRCA experiment were identified. A critique and a set of recommendations for experimental design improvement are included and explored.
Open Access
Anguilla Rostrata, Our Teacher: Addressing Anishnabe Epistemicide through Eels
(2022-12-14) Gansworth, Leora; Wood, Patricia Burke
Epistemicide is proposed in global social theory to describe the deliberate decline of pluralistic knowledge that results from sweeping processes of assimilation and coloniality, including the introduction of settler colonialism as a way of being in place throughout North America. Attention to ontological pluralities demonstrates that individuals and groups are living in and from different Lebenswelt, or lifeworlds, a concept that supports different understandings of constructed and overlapping places and spaces to include epistemological foundations, phenomenological orientations, behaviours and institutions. Anguilla rostrata, also known as eels, are migratory fishes with a deep saltwater origin who can traverse an aquatic path over two thousand miles; they migrate to and enter some freshwater environments across the North American continent. Anguillid species have been historically crucial to Indigenous societies and cultures around the world and are presently threatened by human behaviours. Anguilla rostrata has experienced massive decline in recent decades throughout North America, evoking an uneven response in multiple sectors. This dissertation seeks to align with methods and conventions in Anishnabe studies, informed by concepts in critical Indigenous geography and Indigenous environmental justice scholarship. The methods develop an embodied lifeworld that inquires about Anguilla rostrata through Anishnabe epistemological framing. The research is informed by an emerging Anishnabe geography along with Indigenous legal traditions for the revitalization of Indigenous lifeways as viable methods by which to frame possibilities for improved relationships with ecologies where Anguilla rostrata migrate. Using place-based research, digital surveys, and interviews, the research offers possibilities for an enhanced understanding of eels through pursuit of epistemic justice. Approach of relationships with Anguilla rostrata involves temporal, environmental, and cognitive justice that argues for the eel’s right to be and for amelioration of an inverted, destructive social and environmental order. The research demonstrates that violence rendered against eels must be acknowledged as a tangible effect of imposed governance regimes installed through brute force and ignorance in settler colonial modes of land seizure and occupation.
Open Access
Animals and Development: A Case Study of the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund
(2024-07-22) Legault, Danielle Desiree Emily; Hovorka, Alice J.
Food animals such as cattle, chickens, goats, fish and bees are central to Canada’s international development initiatives which are attempting to eradicate global poverty, hunger, and foster sustainable development. Yet, despite the economic and social prevalence of these programs globally, the animals in these projects are often only counted as economic units; their relationships with the people and environment they interact with, and their welfare are left invisible and unaccounted for. This research centres the animals at the heart of Canadian international development interventions. Through a mixed methods approach, this research documents the historic roles of animals in Canadian development interventions, both domestically and globally; the actors, roles and representations of animals through a contemporary case study of the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF); and looks to the future of animals in development by interrogating the synergies and tensions of the implementation of animal welfare paradigms such as the One Welfare framework. This interdisciplinary research unites animal geographies and development studies to provide scholarly insights on global animal-human relationships, animal welfare, and global well-being to inform future animal-human practices in development.
Open Access
Assessing Long-Term Ecological Changes in Lake Scugog (Southern Ontario, Canada) from ~1700 to 2019 Using Cladocera (Branchipoda, Crustacea) Subfossil Remains as Paleoecological Indicators
(2024-03-16) Jeyarajah, Januja; Korosi, Jennifer
Lake Scugog is a shallow impoundment located in southern Ontario that is encountering several anthropogenic stressors, such as the introduction of invasive species, eutrophication, periodic algal blooms, and climate change. This thesis used a paleolimnological approach to assess the long-term (~200 years) ecological changes in the west and east arms of Lake Scugog using Cladocera (crustacean zooplankton, Class Branchiopoda) remains as bioindicators. Bosmina and C. brevilabris were the dominant cladocerans in Lake Scugog throughout the last several hundred years. Measured Bosmina body sizes were small, indicating high fish planktivory pressure on Bosmina. The changes in subfossil Cladocera and Bosmina in sediments suggest that the stress levels associated with eutrophication, climate change and invasive species have not been large enough to significantly alter predation levels or this part of the zooplankton community in Lake Scugog.
Open Access
Beyond the Border: Buffalo and Blackfoot Tenure on Traditional Territories
(2020-08-11) Van Beek, Shoukia; Lunstrum, Elizabeth M.
The international US-Canada border divides and dissects the ancestral territory of the Siksikaitsitapi Indigenous nations. This thesis examines Siksikaitsitapi experiences of the border as a settler-colonial method of containment and their resistance to these processes through the reintroduction of the buffalo. The reintroduction of the buffalo to Siksikaitsitapi territory represents Siksikaitsitapi worldviews and relationship to the lands which extend across and beyond the imposed border. The buffalo are powerful within Siksikaitsitapi ways of knowing, and their return signifies a resilience in a host of sacred, social, cultural, and traditional principles that underpin Siksikaitsitapi life. This study shows that through the cross-border movement of the free-roaming buffalo, the Siksikaitsitapi are asserting their ongoing presence, relationship to the land, and sovereignty by using Indigenous-led conservation to challenge the divisive nature of the border. This research highlights how Siksikaitsitapi thought and worldviews are continuous and offer a sustainable and meaningful practice for conservation governance.
Open Access
Boundaries, Narrative Frames, and the Politics of Place in Public Housing Redevelopment: Exploring Toronto's Don Mount Court/Rivertowne
(2014-07-09) Mair, David Graeme; Caulfield, Jon; Young, Douglas
Toronto’s Rivertowne (formerly Don Mount Court) is Canada’s first fully completed experiment with redeveloping post-war public housing developments into newly built mixed-income neighbourhoods (a combination of public housing and private condominiums). Originally built at the end of Toronto’s urban renewal era, Don Mount Court consisted of 232 public housing units until the City’s public housing authority decided to tear the buildings down in 2003. Five years later, former residents, along with newcomers, moved into rows of townhouses under its new name, Rivertowne. Proponents of this project believed this would transform an isolated, stigmatized environment into a thriving and integrated community. This thesis explores redevelopment as a mechanism that has profound and intricate impacts on space, place-identity and social dynamics between residents. Drawing on interviews with residents, I argue that the way proponents envision redevelopment is overly idealistic and overshadows a number of problems produced by the project.
Open Access
Building a Mineral Nation? The Oyu Tolgoi Copper-Gold Mine and Contested Infrastructure Development in Mongolia
(2015-08-28) Jackson, Sara Lindsay; Lunstrum, Elizabeth M.
This dissertation investigates mining as a contested nation-building project through the development of mining-related infrastructure for the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine, located in Mongolia’s South Gobi province. Oyu Tolgoi is expected to contribute over 30 percent of Mongolia’s GDP in the coming decades and has become a symbol of the promise of national development through mineral extraction. At the same time, the material effects of mining-related infrastructure challenge these promises of nation-building. I argue that controversies over Oyu Tolgoi provide a lens onto the complexities of mining as a nation-building project, revealing how the state both facilitates and inhibits mining and how people living in mining-affected areas perceive the impacts of mining on their livelihoods, futures, and belonging to the nation. Specifically, I examine how Oyu Tolgoi and its parent corporations contribute to rebuilding Mongolia as a ‘mineral nation;’ how the privatization of water resource access creates new visions of the nation at the cost of pre-existing visions; how road dust brings local residents into intimate contact with contradictions of mining as a nation-building project; and how fiction can reveal alternative understandings of nature, mining, and nation. At the core of contestations over infrastructure development are questions of who has the power to define the direction of the nation, how the materiality of mining channels the possibilities of local and national development, and what are the costs to both local livelihoods and the nation. By focusing attention on mining-related infrastructure, this dissertation contributes to calls for more research on how infrastructure enables, channels, and delimits future possibilities of not only governance and territory, but also, I argue the nation.
Open Access
Building the New Turkey: State-space, Infrastructure, and Citizenship
(2020-11-13) Asci, Pelin; Basu, Ranu
This dissertation explores the contentious and contradictory ways the development of authoritarian infrastructure shapes state-citizenship relations, using the urban as an entry point through which such relations are (re)ordered and (re)produced. To do so, it analyzes the recent housing and mega transit projects in Istanbul as a common thread that weaves through state-space, citizenship, and urbanization. In this context, the research has three interrelated core arguments. First, it argues that within the last 20 years, the Turkish government created a new citizenship contract that presented the provision of infrastructure (housing and transit projects) as its primary mechanism to overcome existing inequalities and to offer full-fledged citizenship to its subjects. Second, it argues that what makes such a citizenship contract possible is the state-led process of commodification and production of parceled land (arsa in Turkish) through urban infrastructure, built on the Neo-Ottoman fantasies of unity, communal belonging, and collective prosperity. Finally, the research argues that such a citizenship model has its own contradictions and instead of overcoming existing inequalities, it creates new forms of socio-spatial and economic unevenness. The states failure to deliver its infrastructural promises reflect the gaps in the social contract, opening new spaces for citizens to reclaim and redefine their rights and responsibilities.
Open Access
Bypassing Barriers: Surface-Groundwater Exchange Between a Wetland, Sandur, and Lava Field in Southeastern Iceland
(2021-03-08) Aggarwal, Aiesha Katya; Young, Kathy Lynn
Iceland is expected to experience slight increases in temperature, precipitation, glacial melt, and volcanic activity over the next century. The influence this will have on groundwater recharge and discharge in spring-fed ecosystems cannot be predicted without a better understanding of spring geological framework and their hydrological regimes. In May 2019, over 50 springs were identified at a sandur-lava field-wetland complex in Southeast Iceland and a subset was selected for further investigation. Spot measurements of water chemistry during the May 2019 field season revealed that the springs discharged cold (45C), slightly acidic (pH 6.16.7) freshwater. Between May 2019 and September 2019, springs at the study site had relatively stable water levels and temperatures, although heavy rains (> 10 mm) corresponded with increased water level and/or temperatures at some locations. Long-term studies will be needed to gain an improved understanding of seasonal spring vulnerability to climate change.
Open Access
Carbon and Mercury Accumulation in Lake Sediments of Rapidly Thawing Discontinuous Permafrost Peatlands (Northwest Territories, Canada)
(2024-03-16) Abulu, Rachael Ehimen; Korosi, Jennifer
This research uses a paleolimnological approach to address gaps in our understanding of lakes as potential sinks for carbon and mercury released from thawing discontinuous permafrost peatlands. Sediment cores were collected from 14 small lakes in the southern Northwest Territories, and core chronologies and sediment accumulation rates established using 210Pb radioisotopes. Most lakes exhibited increases in mercury concentrations independent of organic carbon. Atomic C/N ratios indicated that the proportion of organic carbon from algal sources has also increased. The low sediment focussing factor (< 1.0) observed in the majority of the lakes suggests that small, hydrologically connected shallow lakes act as flow-through systems, which may promote the downstream transport of sediment (and associated carbon and mercury) through sub-arctic watersheds draining thawing permafrost peatlands, rather than acting primarily as carbon and mercury sinks.
Open Access
Carbon Pools, Dynamics and Budget of the Bruce Peninsula
(2024-03-16) Bao, Kathleen; Bello, Richard L.
The northern Bruce Peninsula is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, contains the largest continuous forest in Southern Ontario and is a hotspot for biodiversity. However, there is little research done on the carbon pools, their dynamics and the soil carbon budget. A more comprehensive understanding of the processes regulating the uptake and release of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere is needed. This thesis aims to 1) quantify how much carbon is stored in aboveground biomass, soil, roots, litter, and deadwood pools, 2) understand how the carbon moves between these pools and 3) estimate the annual rate of change of the soil carbon budget. Using a LICOR LI8100, measuring soil respiration at 15-minute intervals over the course of two years, the amount of carbon released by heterotrophic (Rh) and autotrophic (Ra) respiration, was determined for litter and soil separately.
Open Access
Changes in The Seasonality of Sea Ice and The Underlying Mechanisms Across Hudson Bay (HB) from 1979-2018
(2020-08-11) Munir, Ratiba; Bello, Richard
Sea ice in Hudson Bay (HB) holds great importance ecologically, climatologically, economically, and for the Inuit culture. It has been widely established that sea ice seasons: Break-Up (BU), Ice-Free (IF), Freeze-Up (FU) and Ice-Covered (IC) have been shifting, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Energy and Radiation Budget data-set was downloaded from North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR). The analysis has revealed that over the past 40 years, ocean energy exchange is sensitive to astronomical cycles. As the timing of the BU season shifts away from the summer solstice toward the spring equinox the strength of the ice-albedo feedback weakens, slowing the melt of ice. As the IF season is lengthening primarily into the fall/winter, the benefits of low albedo are diminished and the trend is toward net energy loss. Overall, this research fills important gaps in understanding the duration and energetics of each ice season. It also addresses the limitations of NARR albedo data in studying sea ice.
Open Access
Characterizing the Spatial Patterns and Spatially Explicit Probabilities of Post-Fire Vegetation residual patches in Boreal Wildfire Scars
(2015-08-28) Araya, Yikalo Hayelom; Remmel, Tarmo
Wildfire is one of the main natural disturbances that consume a substantial amount of forest cover, influencing and reshaping the landscape mosaic of boreal forests. Wildfires do not burn the entire landscape; they rather create a complex mosaic of post-fire landscape structure with different degrees of burn severity. The resulting spatial mosaic includes fully burned, partially burned, and unburned areas. Even though the most visible components of a fire disturbed landscape are the completely burned areas, a considerable number of residual patches of various size, shape, and composition are retained following a fire. The residual patches refer to remnants of the pre-fire forest ecosystem that left completely unaltered within the fire footprint. Improved understanding of the patterns and characteristics of wildfire residuals provides insights for investigating the effects of fire disturbances, emulating forest disturbances in harvesting operations, and improving forest management planning. Knowledge about the post-fire residuals relies on how well we measure the patterns and characteristics of post-fire residuals, determine the factors that explain their occurrence and patterns, and what consistent measurement framework we use to understand the patterns and predict their likely occurrence. In this study, the patterns and characteristics of post-fire residuals was initially examined based on eleven boreal wildfire events within northwestern Ontario; each ignited by lightning and never suppressed. The wildfire events were occurred in ecoregion 2W during the fire seasons of 2002 and 2003. In order to design a consistent and repeatable method for measuring the patterns of residuals, an integrate approach has been designed. This involves assessing the spatial patterns where the composition, configuration, and fragmentation of residual patches were assessed based on selected spatial metrics; examining the importance of predictor variables that explain residuals and their marginal effects on residual patch occurrence using Random Forest (RF) ensemble method; and developing a spatially explicit predictive model using the RF method where the combined effects of the variables were examined. Finally, the three approaches are applied and evaluated using a recent and independent data from the extensive RED084 wildfire event that occurred in 2011 within the adjacent ecoregion (3S). The effects of analytical scale (i.e., spatial resolution) on characterizing the spatial patterns, determining the relative variable importance, and predicted probabilities of residual patches are assessed. The results show that the composition and configuration of wildfire residuals vary as a function of measurement, spatial resolutions, and fire event sizes, suggesting the variation in fire intensity and severity across the fire events. The patterns of wildfire residuals are also sensitive to changing scale, but the responses of the spatial metrics to changing spatial resolutions are grouped into three categories: monotonic change and predictable response in which three shape related metrics (LSI, MSI, and FRAC) show a predictable responsible; monotonic change with no simple scaling rule; and non-monotonic change with erratic response. The results also reveal that the factors that are incorporated in this study interactively affect the occurrence and distribution of residual patches, but natural firebreak features (e.g., wetlands and surface water) were among the most important predictors to explain wildfire residuals. Furthermore, the model implemented to predict residual patches has a reasonable or high predictive performance (‘marginal’ to ‘strong’ model performance) when it was applied in wildfire events that occurred in the same ecoregion. However, the predictive power of the model is low for the independent fire event (RED084). The overall findings of this dissertation reveal that the 1) predictive model based on RF is robust enough to determine the relative importance of the predictors and their marginal effect; 2) the model was flexible enough to identify areas where wildfire residuals are likely to occur; and 3) there is a repeatable, robust measurement framework for characterizing residual patches and understanding their variability across different wildfire events.
Open Access
Cladoceran Subfossils as indicators of ecosystem responses to multiple stressors in Lake Ontario (Canada) Coastal Wetlands
(2020-08-11) Hoskin, Grace Nicole; Korosi, Jennifer
This thesis explores the use of Cladocera (Branchiopoda, Crustacea) subfossil remains preserved in sediment cores as potential ecological indicators of wetland health in three coastal wetlands of Lake Ontario (Canada). Great Lakes coastal wetlands are crucial for supporting wildlife and filtering pollutants and sediments from water. As watershed development intensifies, anthropogenic stressors impacting wetland health since European settlement in ~1850 remain a fundamental concern. Subfossil Cladocera were analyzed in McLaughlin Bay (Oshawa), Cootes Paradise (Hamilton), and Jordan Harbour (Lincoln). Subfossil Cladocera assemblage changes, particularly decreases in the abundances of littoral taxa, appeared to track declines in aquatic macrophyte coverage resulting from invasive carp, high turbidity, and poor water quality. Some evidence of recent ecosystem recovery was evident in Jordan Harbour, but not in McLaughlin Bay or Cootes Paradise. Overall, paleolimnological approaches can provide a historical context to guide future management and restoration of Great Lakes coastal wetlands.
Open Access
Climate Change and the Fate of Dissolved Organic Carbon in the Mackenzie Delta, NWT
(2016-11-25) Weeks, Gayla; Tank, Suzanne
Circumpolar river deltas are a potential hotspot for the biogeochemical cycling of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as it is leached from the surrounding landscape into deltaic river channels and eventually discharged to the near shore Arctic Ocean. The Mackenzie Delta, an intricate network of over 45,000 lakes in the western Canadian Arctic, is strongly dependent on both the flood dynamics and biogeochemical properties of the northward flowing Mackenzie River. This study examined the seasonal and spatial variability of photochemical and biological DOC degradation within select river channels and lakes of the Mackenzie Delta. The study revealed significant differences in DOC loss via photochemical (PCD) and biological degradation (BDOC) within lakes of differing flood regimes, while river waters showed only minor losses via BDOC, but significant photochemical degradation. In addition, incubation experiments indicate that BDOC is strongly enhanced through UV exposure.
Open Access
Climate Mitigation from a Renter-Centered Perspective: A Case Study of Boulder's SmartRegs Program
(2022-12-14) Yoon, Da Young; Wood, Patricia Burke
My thesis is a renter-centered analysis of the City of Boulder’s SmartRegs rental energy efficiency standards, as a policymaking process that purports to address both climate and housing issues simultaneously, rather than one at the expense of the other. This focus on renters starts from the premise that housing and climate justice should be about the people most impacted. My preliminary findings indicate that, despite nearly all rental units meeting the SmartRegs’ basic energy efficiency requirements, SmartRegs did not result in improved tenant comfort and lower utility bills, as promised by the City of Boulder. I argue that SmartRegs was predominantly a carbon-focused policy to reduce emissions in rental buildings, rather than a renter-centered policy that improved housing quality issues or affordability for renters. I recommend that cities like Toronto learn from Boulder and proactively include renters in policymaking processes and protect them against unaffordable housing and local climate impacts.