Geography Faculty News - 2007
Geography Faculty News - 2007
We are most pleased to welcome Dr. Philip Owens, who joins us from the U.K. Phil has physical geography degrees from UBC (MSc), and Exeter University, UK (PhD) and was working at the National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University, UK, before taking this position at UNBC. He is currently in the Environmental Science Program. He has worked on sediment tracing techniques, large scale sediment fluxes, and sediment-associated nutrient transfers in catchments. While in the UK he was working extensively within the European Union on the process of developing guidance for an EU sediment management policy.
We are also delighted to welcome back Dr. Ellen Petticrew from a two-year leave that she spent in the School of Geography at the University of Plymouth (U.K.). Drs. Petticrew and Owens began positions as Joint Chairs of Landscape Ecology at UNBC in January 2007. Their research looks at the linkage between terrestrial and aquatic systems with sediment transfers, and their implications studied at both the catchment and plot scales. Future (and some current) work will have an emphasis on sediment impacts from disturbance regimes such as fire, forest harvesting, pine beetles and agriculture. The majority of their future work will take place in the Quesnel River Watershed (~11,500 km2) based out of UNBC's Quesnel River Research Centre in Likely, BC.
Dr. Neil Williams has also joined UNBC recently as a post-doctoral fellow working with Drs. Ellen Petticrew & Phil Owens. He is involved in terrestrial and aquatic research at the Quesnel River Research Centre. He is located in Rm 8-361 and can be contacted at 960-6739.
Dr. Ellen Petticrew and Dr. Phil Owens attended the European Geosciences Union annual meeting in Vienna, Austria in April 15 - 20, 2007. Ellen convened an oral session and Phil gave one talk. Together they presented a total of 5 posters. See the NRESi newsletter for more details.
Dr. Gail Fondahl served as co-organizer, along with Natalia Novikova of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow) for the 5th International Summer School in Legal Anthropology, on Self-Government and Co-management: Prospects for the Indigenous Peoples of Russia’s North. The summer school was held in the western Siberian city (and oil centre) of Khanty-Mansiysk, from August 6 -11. Rick Krehbiel (ENPL Adjunct), Pam Tobin (MA NRES Geography, now working with Dr. Laurie Chan), Richard Binder from the Inuvialuit Joint Secretariat and Gail presented talks on co-management, impact benefit agreements and resource revenue sharing, and cultural dimensions of EIAs. The summer school involved 30 students (comprised of undergraduate and graduate students and indigenous activists), and 8 lecturers (lawyers, anthropologists, geographers from Russia and Canada).
This August, Dr. Brian Menounos and colleague Dr. Paul Sanborn (ESM) travelled to Cairns, Australia to attend the INQUA Congress which is a gathering every four years of the International Union for Quaternary Research. This is the largest gathering of its kind of Quaternary researchers. Session themes are broad, and such diverse topics are covered such as palaeoclimate, archaeology, glaciology, the carbon cycle and environmental reconstruction. Brian presented one paper, co-authored another two and was a co-convener of a session entitled Global Glacier Fluctuations.