Research and publications
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/6201
This collection consists of research and scholarship produced by faculty members and graduate students affiliated with the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (FEUC). It may also contain scholarship from faculty members and graduate students previously affiliated with the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) during the period of 1968 to 2020.
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Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Queere Nostalgie(Transkript, 2021-10-07) Haritaworn, Jin; Nobrega, Onur; Quent, M; Zipf, JMein Buch Queer Lovers and Hateful Others, aus dem der folgende Auszug stammt, beschreibt die räumlichen Auswirkungen homonationalistischer Territorialität im Zuge der Gentrifizierung der Berliner Innenstadt in den 2000er- und frühen 2010er-Jahren (vgl. Haritaworn 2015). Das Drama zwischen queeren Liebenden und hasserfühlten Anderen, welches die Vertreibung rassifizierter Menschen aus Stadtteilen wie Kreuzberg und Neukölln naturalisiert und als progressive Entwicklung umdeuten lässt, ist zugleich ein Narrativ der Zeit. 2008 wurde im Berliner Tiergarten das Denkmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen eingeweiht, einen Steinwurf entfernt vom drei Jahre älteren Holocaust-Denkmal. Als fester Bestandteil queerer Sightseeing-Touren spielt das »Homo-Denkmal«, wie es liebevoll anthropomorphisiert wird, eine privilegierte Rolle in der Erinnerungskultur an die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit, die sowohl als das ultimative Böse der rassistischen und sexuellen Unterdrückung als auch als mythischer Ursprung einer weltweiten lesbischen, schwulen, bisexuellen und Transgender (LSBT-)Community gilt. Dieser Essay untersucht die Kampagne für das Denkmal sowie dessen ästhetische und affektive Eigenschaften, und betrachtet beide als Performanzen eines Präsentismus, die das Drama der queeren Liebenden und hasserfüllten Anderen neu aufführen als die Wiederholung einer grauenhaften Vergangenheit. Dieses Drama findet in der Gegenwart neue Inkarnationen in rassifizierten Bevölkerungsgruppen, die queere Menschen terrorisieren. Im Folgenden beziehe ich mich auf Literaturen zu queerer Temporalität und auf intersektionale Historiografien zum Nationalsozialismus, die die Privilegierung des Konzentrationslagers als markantesten Ort queerphober Unterdrückung infrage stellen. Dagegen lege ich dar, inwiefern diese Gedenkformen des vergangenen Terrors ironischerweise mörderische Logiken im Hier und Jetzt bedienen.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , From the Kitchen Table to the Streets: Queer of Colour Reflections on Racial Capitalism(Det Kgl. Bibliotek/Royal Danish Library, 2022-06-30) Haritaworn, JinI have been thinking about gender, sexuality, race and capitalism in relation to several conjunctures, from the war on terror and the backlash against multiculturalism to neoliberal urban development and, most recently, COVID-19. I have done so in conversation with a promiscuous array of theorists, who situate themselves in a range of formations, from queer of colour and critical ethnic to Black and Indigenous studies, and who work with a range of concepts, from post- and anticolonial takes on biopolitics and necropolitics to racial capitalism (e.g. Combahee River Collective Statement 1983, Coulthard 2014, Ferguson 2004, Haritaworn, Kuntsman & Posocco 2014, Melamed 2015, Pulido 2016, Robinson 1983, Simpson 2013, Thompson 2021). This article revisits some of my projects related to this and concludes in what I propose as a specifically queer engagement with racial capitalism.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Murderous Inclusions(Taylor & Francis, 2013-12-17) Haritaworn, Jin; Kuntsman, Adi; Posocco, SilviaThe aim of this Special Issue is to interrogate the intersection of violence and feminist and queer politics of inclusion. As critical voices within the ‘sexual citizenship’ debate have argued, middle-class and homonormative performances of politics and identity are often privileged in dominant frames of inclusion and belonging (Richardson Citation2000; Bell and Binnie Citation2002). Moving beyond an analysis of citizenship as limited to some and not others, our scholarly and political aim is to debunk the very move of inclusion – into citizenship, rights and political subjecthood – through sexuality. Instead of taking for granted the incorporation of sexual minorities as a certain pathway to progressive politics, this Special Issue asks how inclusions can be murderous by shifting the focus from their promise to their violences. Contributors to the issue reflect on the ‘intimate investments’ (Agathangelou, Bassichis and Spira Citation2008) surrounding, for example, international development aid conditionality and local, national and transnational regimes of governance of identity and desire; same-sex marriage reforms in the context of structural assaults against racialized and economically disadvantaged populations; sexual and gendered citizenship regimes and the pathologization, criminalization and/or violent erasure of sexually and gender-non conforming subjects from lower classes/castes; the uneven and ambivalent extension of state protection to individuals on the grounds of sexual and gender identity in a context of unchallenged heteronormativity; and alliances between neo-imperial free-market capitalism, slavery and political value struggles (see also Bailey, Kandaswamy and Richardson Citation2004; Smith Citation2007; Reddy Citation2011; Spade Citation2011 reviewed in this issue; Stanley and Smith Citation2011 reviewed in this issue; Ekine and Abbas Citation2013). In that respect, the articles brought together here decouple the link between inclusion, queer politics and justice, and explore the mundane articulation of such dynamics. They draw our attention to how a range of murderous inclusions shape contemporary formations of queer citizenship in various geopolitical locations across the world. By withdrawing the gaze from inclusion's seductive promises and looking at the deadly outcomes of some forms of inclusion, the issue returns the focus on those lives and deaths (queer or otherwise) that fall outside of inclusive citizenships and into erasure, violence and abandonment, and subsequently appear not to matter.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Über die (Un-)Möglichkeit, die Beziehung zwischen Kolonialität, Urbanität und Sexualität zu thematisieren. Kommentar zu Stephan Lanz’ „Über (Un-) Möglichkeiten, hiesige Stadtforschung zu postkolonialisieren“(sub\urban e.V., 2015-04-10) Haritaworn, JinDie Kritik von Stephan Lanz an einer deutschen Stadtforschung, die die Kolonialität nordwesteuropäischer Städte wie Berlin umgeht und an entwicklungsparadigmatischen Vorstellungen von ‚Moderne‘ und ‚Tradition‘ festhält, ist willkommen und an der Zeit. Tatsächlich haben deutsche Stadtforscher_innen einen erheblichen Nachholbedarf in Forschungsfeldern wie Postkolonialität und Dekolonialität, environmental justice und Rassismus und Raum (...)Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , #NoGoingBack: Queer Leaps at the Intersection of Protest and COVID-19(Intellect, 2020-06) Haritaworn, JinThe concurrency of quarantine and protest has highlighted the trappings of a modernist realism whose conservative solutions reveal a paucity of methods and dreams. The wins that the uprisings against anti-Black police violence have put on the horizon, from the dismantling of carceral institutions to the uplifting of alternatives, have been long seeded by social movements that demanded the impossible. This includes ancestors, many of whom Black, queer and abolitionist, who prepared to take fantastic leaps, in the words of the Combahee River Collective. The following meditation holds up this legacy in order to reckon with the racism accompanying this latest crisis, from the Orientalist origin story of the coronavirus to a global quarantine paradigm that is haunted by racial capitalism. At the dystopic crossroad of the pandemic and the uprisings, a multiracial and multispecies spectre of planetary interdependence appears. This is illustrated by a mutual aid movement that uses digital and offline tactics in order to norm beyond the normal. In the place of a state-led surveillance and a single-issue environmentalism that are hostile to those most vulnerable to the virus, an urban environmental justice becomes palpable whose methods are queer.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Urban change detection: assessing biophysical drivers using machine learning and Google Earth Engine(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2025-03-20) Durowoju, Olufemi Sunday; Obateru, Rotimi Oluseyi; Adelabu, Samuel; Olusola, AdeyemiUrban areas are experiencing rapid transformations, driven by population growth, economic development, and policy changes. Understanding and monitoring these dynamic changes is crucial for sustainable urban planning and management. This study leverages machine learning and Google Earth Engine to investigate urban dynamics and its interactions with biophysical conditions in the Kaduna River Basin (KRB), Nigeria. This study utilized a dataset of 192 points, initially extracted from Google Earth Engine, to analyze urban transitions between 1987 and 2020, incorporating biophysical and environmental variables such as population density, precipitation, and surface temperature. The dataset was processed in R using the CARET package, with missing data imputed via K-nearest neighbors (KNN), categorical variables transformed using One-Hot Encoding, and numerical variables rescaled for consistency. A tenfold cross-validation approach was used to train and validate machine learning models, including random forest, support vector machine, KNN, and multivariate adaptive regression splines, ensuring optimal model performance. Model evaluation metrics such as overall accuracy, kappa, F1 score, and area under the curve confirmed the reliability of the models in identifying the biophysical factors influencing urban changes. The findings revealed overall accuracy of 0.80, 0.73, 0.71, and 0.72 and kappa statistics of 0.60, 0.46, 0.42, and 0.45 for random forest (RF), multivariate adaptive regression splines, support vector machine, and KNN, respectively, with RF emerging as the most accurate model (80%) for predicting urban change patterns in KRB. Land cover changes reveal rapid urban expansion (154.81%), declining water bodies (− 95.79%), and vegetation growth (174%). Machine learning models identify population density and water stress index as key urban change drivers, with climate factors like temperature and precipitation playing crucial roles. The results of this study offer valuable insights into the processes driving urban transformation and present a robust methodology for monitoring and predicting future urban development. This study aids in the creation of strategies for sustainable urban growth and the mitigation of adverse environmental impacts.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Designing a deep learning-based framework for the prediction of lake surface closed curves(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2025-02-17) Santos, Celso Augusto Guimarães; Misra, Debasmita; Ghanimeh, Sophia; Olusola, Adeyemi; Patel, Utkarsh; Golmohammadi, Golmar; Abdi, Erfan; Karimi, Vahid; Ghorbani, Mohammad AliPredicting the surface area and shape of lakes is critical for ecological, hydrological, and climatic studies. Accurate predictions enhance the understanding of lake dynamics, facilitate water resource management, and support environmental change assessments. Traditional methods, while foundational, often lack the efficiency, accuracy, and scalability required to handle complex lake systems, necessitating modern, technology-driven approaches. This study introduces a novel methodology for predicting changes in lake surface area and shape, including shoreline dynamics. The approach employs advanced remote sensing techniques and mathematical modeling, integrating Mathematica simulations with Net-Encoder and Deconvolution models. The framework achieved a high accuracy rate of 93% in water pixel extraction. Results indicate significant reductions in surface area, with Lake Eucumbene shrinking by 4.3% and the Salton Sea by 14.54%. The most notable shoreline changes occurred in the southwestern and northern regions of Lake Eucumbene and the southwestern region of the Salton Sea. This research highlights the effectiveness of a remote sensing-based approach for monitoring lake surface dynamics, offering a low-cost, high-accuracy tool for environmental monitoring and climate change impact assessment. Compared to existing methods, the proposed approach provides equivalent accuracy while delivering enhanced operational simplicity and flexibility.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Imprints of large‐scale climate oscillations on river flow in selected Canadian river catchments(Wiley, 2024-06-17) Olusola, Adeyemi; Ogunjo, Samuel; Olusegun, Christiana FWe investigated the impacts of six major climate oscillations on river flow at three stations within the Humber catchments (located in Ontario, ON and Newfoundland and Labrador, NL) from 1970 to 2020 using sensitivity and wavelet analyses. Results indicate that the discharge at East Humber River near Pine (ON) exhibits the highest statistically significant sensitivity, with 0.304 and 0.394 monthly units to the Dipole Mode Index (DMI) and Tropical North Atlantic (TNA), respectively. Monthly significance analysis also highlights the diverse influence of large‐scale climate oscillations on river flow across the three locations. Wavelet analysis reveals significant active multidecadal oscillations for the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) at East Humber River near Pine, with high spectral power. We confirmed that stations within ON demonstrate sensitivities in a similar direction to the large‐scale climate oscillations, contrasting with those observed at NL. The observed inconsistency in the relationship between large‐scale climate oscillations and, for instance, NAO at various locations suggests that the impacts of climate oscillations may manifest differently in different regions. Overall, while inland stations exhibit similar sensitivity patterns, the coastal station demonstrates distinct responses, highlighting the importance of geographical context in understanding the impacts of large‐scale climate oscillations on river flow dynamics.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , The IAHS Science for Solutions decade, with Hydrology Engaging Local People IN a Global world (HELPING)(Taylor & Francis, 2024-05-20) Arheimer, Berit; Cudennec, Christophe; Castellarin, Attilio; Grimaldi, Salvatore; Heal, Kate V; Lupton, Claire; Sarkar, Archana; Tian, Fuqiang; Kileshye Onema, Jean-Marie; Archfield, Stacey; Blöschl, Günter; Chaffe, Pedro L Borges; Croke, Barry FW; Dembélé, Moctar; Leong, Chris; Mijic, Ana; Mosquera, Giovanny M; Nlend, Bertil; Olusola, Adeyemi O; Polo, María J; Sandells, Melody; Sheffield, Justin; van Hateren, Theresa C; Shafiei, Mojtaba; Adla, Soham; Agarwal, Ankit; Aguilar, Cristina; Andersson, Jafet CM; Andraos, Cynthia; Andreu, Ana; Avanzi, Francesco; Bart, Ryan R; Bartosova, Alena; Batelaan, Okke; Bennett, James C; Bertola, Miriam; Bezak, Nejc; Boekee, Judith; Bogaard, Thom; Booij, Martijn J; Brigode, Pierre; Buytaert, Wouter; Bziava, Konstantine; Castelli, Giulio; Castro, Cyndi V; Ceperley, Natalie C; Chidepudi, Sivarama KR; Chiew, Francis HS; Chun, Kwok P; Dagnew, Addisu G; Dekongmen, BW; del Jesus, Manuel; Dezetter, Alain; do Nascimento Batista, José A; Doble, Rebecca C; Dogulu, Nilay; Eekhout, Joris PC; Elçi, Alper; Elenius, Maria; Finger, David C; Fiori, Aldo; Fischer, Svenja; Förster, Kristian; Ganora, Daniele; Gargouri Ellouze, Emna; Ghoreishi, Mohammad; Harvey, Natasha; Hrachowitz, Markus; Jampani, Mahesh; Jaramillo, Fernando; Jongen, Harro J; Kareem, Kola Y; Khan, Usman T; Khatami, Sina; Kingston, Daniel G; Koren, Gerbrand; Krause, Stefan; Kreibich, Heidi; Lerat, Julien; Liu, Junguo; Madruga de Brito, Mariana; Mahé, Gil; Makurira, Hodson; Mazzoglio, Paola; Merheb, Mohammad; Mishra, Ashish; Mohammad, Hiba; Montanari, Alberto; Mujere, Never; Nabavi, Ehsan; Nkwasa, Albert; Orduna Alegria, Maria E; Orieschnig, Christina; Ovcharuk, Valeriya; Palmate, Santosh S; Pande, Saket; Pandey, Shachi; Papacharalampous, Georgia; Pechlivanidis, Ilias; Penny, Gopal; Pimentel, Rafael; Post, David A; Prieto, Cristina; Razavi, Saman; Salazar-Galán, Sergio; Sankaran Namboothiri, Adarsh; Santos, Pedro P; Savenije, Hubert; Shanono, Nura J; Sharma, Ashutosh; Sivapalan, Murugesu; Smagulov, Zhanibek; Szolgay, Jan; Teng, Jin; Teuling, Adriaan J; Teutschbein, Claudia; Tyralis, Hristos; van Griensven, Ann; van Schalkwyk, Andries J; van Tiel, Marit; Viglione, Alberto; Volpi, Elena; Wagener, Thorsten; Wang-Erlandsson, Lan; Wens, Marthe; Xia, JunThe new scientific decade (2023-2032) of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) aims at searching for sustainable solutions to undesired water conditions - may it be too little, too much or too polluted. Many of the current issues originate from global change, while solutions to problems must embrace local understanding and context. The decade will explore the current water crises by searching for actionable knowledge within three themes: global and local interactions, sustainable solutions and innovative cross-cutting methods. We capitalise on previous IAHS Scientific Decades shaping a trilogy; from Hydrological Predictions (PUB) to Change and Interdisciplinarity (Panta Rhei) to Solutions (HELPING). The vision is to solve fundamental water-related environmental and societal problems by engaging with other disciplines and local stakeholders. The decade endorses mutual learning and co-creation to progress towards UN sustainable development goals. Hence, HELPING is a vehicle for putting science in action, driven by scientists working on local hydrology in coordination with local, regional, and global processes.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Fatty acid profiles of feeding and fasting bears: estimating calibration coefficients, the timeframe of diet estimates, and selective mobilization during hibernation(Journal of Comparative Physiology B Biochemical, Systems, and Environmental Physiology, 2021-10-23) Thiemann, Gregory; Rode, Karyn; Erlenbach, Joy; Budge, Suzanne; Robbins, CharlesAccurate information on diet composition is central to understanding and conserving carnivore populations. Quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) has emerged as a powerful tool for estimating the diets of predators, but ambiguities remain about the timeframe of QFASA estimates and the need to account for species-specific patterns of metabolism. We conducted a series of feeding experiments with four juvenile male brown bears (Ursus arctos) to (1) track the timing of changes in adipose tissue composition and QFASA diet estimates in response to a change in diet and (2) quantify the relationship between consumer and diet FA composition (i.e., determine “calibration coefficients”). Bears were fed three compositionally distinct diets for 90–120 days each. Two marine-based diets were intended to approximate the lipid content and composition of the wild diet of polar bears (U. maritimus). Bear adipose tissue composition changed quickly in the direction of the diet and showed evidence of stabilization after 60 days. During hibernation, FA profiles were initially stable but diet estimates after 10 weeks were sensitive to calibration coefficients. Calibration coefficients derived from the marine-based diets were broadly similar to each other and to published values from marine-fed mink (Mustela vison), which have been used as a model for free-ranging polar bears. For growing bears on a high-fat diet, the temporal window for QFASA estimates was 30–90 days. Although our results reinforce the importance of accurate calibration, the similarities across taxa and diets suggest it may be feasible to develop a generalized QFASA approach for mammalian carnivores.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Gendering grassrootscapes: The sociospatial relations of lower working-class women dwelling in the socialist Workers’ New Villages in post-reform Shanghai(Journal of Urban Affairs, 2023-09-15) Ip, Penn Tsz Ting; HUANG, TSUNG-YI; Wang, JingWomen of the lower working-class in Shanghai are seemingly invisible in Chinese urban scholarship. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2021 in Shanghai, this article sheds light on the social lives of lower working-class women dwelling in the Workers’ New Villages in the wake of rapid urbanization. Mounting a threefold conceptual exploration of grassroots urbanism, genderscapes, and guanxi (social connectivity), the article develops and coins the term “grassrootscapes” to explicate grassroots women’s sociospatial relations with housing units, the community, and the city. Probing these multi-layered horizons to trace women’s life trajectories and gendered experiences, the article discerns how sociospatial dynamics of “grassrootscapes” are produced under a socialist system, in which women’s day-to-day suffering is a by-product of market reforms. Socialist workers’ housing is employed as a case study to show how the conceptualization of “grassrootscapes” can be a useful tool to examine the social transformation brought about by the drastic changes in urban policies in globalizing cities.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Assessing the impacts of urban beehives on wild bees using individual, community, and population-level metrics(Urban Ecosystems, 2023-05-22) MacKell, Sarah; Elsayed, Hadil; Colla, Sheila RSeveral species of wild bees are in decline globally and the presence of managed honey bees is one of many proposed stressors on wild bee populations. However, there is limited knowledge of the impacts of honey bee hives on wild bees, especially in urban landscapes. We performed a field study to assess the associations between honey bees and wild bees within the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. We measured relative abundance of honey bees, wild bee metrics (abundance, community composition, functional diversity, and body size), and floral resources (floral density and richness); we also calculated impervious surface at 500 m and 1 km for each of our sites. Our main findings were that increasing honey bee abundance was correlated with decreases in wild bee species richness and functional diversity, as well as two wild bee species’ abundances and one wild bee species body size, out of many assessed. This research adds to the growing body of literature aiming to evaluate whether honey bees are a stressor on wild bees in urban landscapes, which will be valuable for informing conservation management practices and future research.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Extending morphological pattern segmentation to 3D voxels(Springer, 2022-01) Remmel, Tarmo KThis short communication introduces the logic, demonstrates its use, and identifies the availability of a new tool that extends the traditional 2D morphological segmentation of binary raster data into the 3-dimensional realm of voxels. A combination of 3-dimensional array data and network graph theory are implemented to facilitate the logical parsing of identified 3-dimensional features into their mutually exclusive constituent morphological classes. All processing is performed in the R environment, providing the ability for anyone to perform the demonstrated analyses on their own data. The only input requirement is a binary (1 = feature of interest, 0 otherwise) 3-dimensional array, where each voxel of interest is then classified into classes called outside, mass, skin, crumb, antenna, circuit, bond, and void that correspond their 2-dimensional equivalents of background, core, edge, islet, branch, loop, bridge, and perforation. An additional class called the void-volume identifies voxels belonging to the empty space within the object of interest. The work helps to bring pattern metrics into the 3-dimensional world, particularly given the reliance on adjacency and connectivity assessmentsItem type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Common Areas, Common Causes: Public Space in High‐Rise Buildings During Covid‐19(Urban Planning, 2022-11-22) March, Loren; Lehrer, UteThis article explores forms of public space that have been rendered palpable during the Covid‐19 pandemic: public spaces in high‐rise buildings. We consider both physical and social public space in this context, thinking about the safety of both common areas and amenities in buildings and the emergence of new publics around the conditions of tower living during the pandemic (particularly focusing on tenant struggles). We determine that the planning, use, maintenance, and social production of public space in high‐rise buildings are topics of increasing concern and urgency and that the presence of public space in the vertical built forms and lifestyles proliferating in urban regions complicates common understandings of public space. We argue that the questions raised by the pandemic call upon us to reconsider the meanings of public space.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Everyday Urbanisms in the Pandemic City: A Feminist Comparative Study of the Gendered Experiences of Covid-19 in Southern Cities(Social & Cultural Geography, 2022-07-31) Razavi, Nasya; Adeniyi-Ogunyankin, Grace; Basu, Swagata; Datta, Anindita; de Souza, Karen; Ip, Penn Tsz Ting; Koleth, Elsa; Marcus, Joy; Miraftab, Faranak; Mullings, Beverley; Nmormah , Sylvester; Odunola, Bukola; Burgoa, Sonia Pardo; Peake, LindaDrawing on GenUrb’s comparative research undertaken in mid-2020 with communities in five cities—Cochabamba, Bolivia, Delhi, India, Georgetown, Guyana, Ibadan, Nigeria, and Shanghai, China—we engage in an intersectional analysis of the gendered impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in women’s everyday lives. Our research employs a variety of context-specific methods, including virtual methods, phone interviews, and socially-distanced interviews to engage women living in neighbourhoods characterized by underdevelopment and economic insecurity. While existing conditions of precarity trouble the before-and-after terminology of Covid-19, across the five cities the narratives of women’s everyday lives reveal shifts in spatial-temporal orders that have deepened gendered and racial exclusions. We find that limited mobilities and the different and changing dimensions of production and social reproduction have led to increased care work, violence, and strained mental health. Finally, we also find that social reproduction solidarities, constituting old and new circuits of care, have been reinforced during the pandemic.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Trends in historical mercury deposition inferred from lake sediment cores across a climate gradient in the Canadian High Arctic(ScienceDirect, 2018-10) Korosi, Jennifer; Griffiths, Katherine; Smol, John; Blais, JulesRecent climate change may be enhancing mercury fluxes to Arctic lake sediments, confounding the use of sediment cores to reconstruct histories of atmospheric deposition. Assessing the independent effects of climate warming on mercury sequestration is challenging due to temporal overlap between warming temperatures and increased long-range transport of atmospheric mercury following the Industrial Revolution. We address this challenge by examining mercury trends in short cores (the last several hundred years) from eight lakes centered on Cape Herschel (Canadian High Arctic) that span a gradient in microclimates, including two lakes that have not yet been significantly altered by climate warming due to continued ice cover. Previous research on subfossil diatoms and inferred primary production indicated the timing of limnological responses to climate warming, which, due to prevailing ice cover conditions, varied from ∼1850 to ∼1990 for lakes that have undergone changes. We show that climate warming may have enhanced mercury deposition to lake sediments in one lake (Moraine Pond), while another (West Lake) showed a strong signal of post-industrial mercury enrichment without any corresponding limnological changes associated with warming. Our results provide insights into the role of climate warming and organic carbon cycling as drivers of mercury deposition to Arctic lake sediments.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Opportunity costs: Underemployment and mental health inequities between immigrant and Canadian-born labour force participants, a cross-sectional study(Springer, 2021-09-25) Mawani, Farah N.; O'Campo, Patricia; Smith, PeterObjectives To examine the association of underemployment (operationalized as unemployment or overqualification) to fair/poor self-rated mental health (SRMH) in: 1. labour force participants, 2. between a. immigrant vs. Canadian-born and b. recent (< 10 years in Canada; arrived 1993-2003) vs. long-term immigrant (³ 10 years in Canada) labour force participants. Methods Data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2.1 (2003) was used to explore associations within the context of a 1993 national immigration policy shift prioritizing admission of skilled immigrants. Logistic regression analyses were performed to estimate odds ratios associating underemployment with fair/poor SRMH for the full study sample, then stratified by a. immigrant status, and b. length of time in Canada. Data was weighted to reflect the CCHS 2.1 sample design, adjustments for nonresponse, and post-stratification. The study sample included 57 308 labour force participants aged 18–64. Following a listwise deletion of participants with missing values for independent variables, dependent variable, and/or covariates, the resulting sample was 54 064 (94% of the eligible sample). Results Underemployment was positively associated to fair/poor SRMH for labour force participants. Overqualification was positively associated to fair/poor SRMH for immigrant (AOR 1.63; 95% CI 1.16 to 2.27), but not for Canadian-born labour force participants (AOR 1.03; 95% CI 0.90 to 1.20). Unemployment (AOR 3.41; 95% CI 1.79 to 6.48) and overqualification (AOR 1.52; 95% CI 1.04 to 2.21) only had significant positive associations with fair/poor SRMH for long-term immigrants. The magnitude of association of overqualification was greater for recent (AOR 2.04) than long-term immigrants and this may have practical importance. Conclusions The findings suggest the need for tailored interventions to prevent underemployment and fair/poor SRMH for immigrant vs. Canadian-born labour force participants. A whole of government approach is needed to reduce underemployment of immigrants and its mental health impact.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Drivers and consequences of apex predator diet composition in the Canadian Beaufort Sea(Springer, 2020-09-08) Florko, Katie; Thiemann, Gregory; Bromaghin, J. F.Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on annual sea ice as their primary habitat for hunting marine mammal prey. Given their long lifespan, wide geographic distribution, and position at the top of the Arctic marine food web, the diet composition of polar bears can provide insights into temporal and spatial ecosystem dynamics related to climate-mediated sea ice loss. Polar bears with the greatest ecological constraints on diet composition may be most vulnerable to climate-related changes in ice conditions and prey availability. We used quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) to estimate the diets of polar bears (n = 419) in two western Canadian Arctic subpopulations (Northern Beaufort Sea and Southern Beaufort Sea) from 1999 to 2015. Polar bear diets were dominated by ringed seal (Pusa hispida), with interannual, seasonal, age- and sex-specific variation. Foraging area and sea ice conditions also affected polar bear diet composition. Most variation in bear diet was explained by longitude, reflecting spatial variation in prey availability. Sea ice conditions (extent, thickness, and seasonal duration) declined throughout the study period, and date of sea ice break-up in the preceding spring was positively correlated with female body condition and consumption of beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas), suggesting that bears foraged on beluga whales during entrapment events. Female body condition was positively correlated with ringed seal consumption, and negatively correlated with bearded seal consumption. This study provides insights into the complex relationships between declining sea ice habitat and the diet composition and foraging success of a wide-ranging apex predator.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Explaining the Deprofessionalized Filipino: Why Filipino Immigrants Get Low-Paying Jobs in Toronto(CERIS - The Ontario Metropolis Centre, 2009-10)Processes of labour market subordination among Filipino immigrants to Canada have been widely observed in recent years, but the reasons for them have usually been assumed to be typical of all immigrant groups. While some processes behind deprofessionalization and mismatched skills in the labour market are indeed generic and experienced by all immigrants arriving with non-Canadian credentials and experience, particular groups experience the labour market in specific ways. In this paper, we seek to provide a nuanced assessment of the factors behind the deprofessionalization of Filipino immigrants in particular, by drawing attention to a mixture of cultural, economic, social and institutional circumstances that shape the experience of this group. We argue that the distinctive labour market integration processes affecting Filipino immigrants requires attention by policy makers, and by implication we also suggest the importance of considering the distinctive labour market experiences of other specific groups. The generic immigrant experience that so often forms the basis of quantitative or institutional assessments of labour market integration should not be assumed to be universally applicable.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Power of the People: A Review of Citizen Science Programs for Conservation(Biological Conservation, 2020-09) MacPhail, Victoria; Colla, Sheila R.Citizen science is a rapidly growing field whereby volunteers can collect and/or analyze data to contribute to research and gain an appreciation for the environment. There are countless programs currently underway around the world: some have clear scientific hypotheses being tested and others are simple data gathering; some are designed and led at the grass-roots level while others are done by academics. This review focusses on best practices for the development and running of citizen science projects to make them successful. It includes discussion around different methods of experimental design, data collection, and analyses; how participants are recruited, engaged, and rewarded (including who participates and why); the effect of participation on the volunteer’s knowledge and actions; and the impact programs have on policy and other conservation actions. While there are several challenges that projects face, and more research is needed in various areas, the many benefits support the continued expansion of citizen science projects.