Project Title : CREATE Environmental Innovation Project Leader : Murray Humphries

1. Project Title: CREATE Environmental Innovation Project Leader: Murray Humphries Project Focus: enhancing Canada's prosperity through innovative environmental assessment, monitoring and management. How can northern resource development proceed while minimizing environmental impacts and maximizing community benefits? A multidisciplinary graduate training program oriented around industrial, government, and indigenous engagement.

2. CREATE Environmental Innovation: Northern resource development Industry Government Indigenous

3. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The collaborators… • 3 consulting firms • 7 industries • 2 NGOs Industry

4. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The collaborators… Government • 5 territorial/provincial • governments • 2 federal ministries Industry

5. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The collaborators… Government Indigenous Industry • 5 indigenous • organizations

6. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The research and training… Industry Government Indigenous

7. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The graduate training… • Eye-opener courses • Complexity faced by environmental managers • Science-human value interface in resource management • Case-studies of actual area-based resource management issue • Challenges and skills required for effective resource assessment, management, and monitoring • Core courses • Indigenous Rights & Engagement • Natural Resource Economics, Industry, & Regulation • Ecoinformatics, Data Analyses, & Experimental Design • Model Development & Scenarios

8. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The graduate training… • Recruitment of northern and aboriginal students is a project priority • Internships with industry, government, and aboriginal organizations • Thesis-based research in environmental sciences

9. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team… • Nil Basu (Natural Resource Sc and CINE) • Contamination of aquatic resources • Genetic susceptibilities to contaminant exposures amongst First Nations • Food safety and oil-contamination of traditional foods near oil sands • Toxic exposures amongst workers involved in informal mining and electronic waste recycling in Ghana • Elena Bennett (Natural Resource Sc) • Changes in ecosystem service interactions in a changing North • Relationships between ecosystem service provision and livelihoods in northern communities • Comparisons of the ecosystem service interactions of 'working landscapes' in Canada's North with more well-studied southern working landscapes • Recovery of ecosystem services (and their interactions) after resource extraction

10. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team… • Jeff Cardille (Natural Resource Sc) • Maintaining wildlife corridors in Canada's North • Dynamic assessments of land-use change from the Landsat record • Merging information from multiple remote sensors • Correspondence between estimated wildlife corridors and observed movements of target organisms • Jim Fyles(Natural Resource Sc) • Forest functions and dynamics • Scientific knowledge, policy and forest management • Interrelationships between plants, soil, and disturbances • Functioning of complex ecological and socio-ecological systems across multiple scales

11. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team… • Jessica Head (Natural Resource Sc) • Species susceptibility to toxic effects of oil contaminants • Molecular tools for ecological risk assessment • Birds as sentinels for environmental quality • Gordon Hickey (Natural Resource Sc) • Sustainable natural resource management and policy of complex social-ecological systems • Resilience of natural resource-dependent communities, particularly of their food systems as a function of the social actors and institutions involved in governing resource use and stewardship • Northern indigenous communities’ benefits and engagement in natural sciences research

12. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The McGill research team… • Murray Humphries (Natural Resource Sc and CINE) • Impacts of northern resource development on traditional food security • Biologging wildlife to predict, assess, and mitigate the impacts of northern resource development • Contributions of wildlife co-management and participatory research to sustainable development • Chris Solomon (Natural Resource Sc) • Ecological and social-ecological dynamics of fisheries •  Fisheries management in the northern context • Carbon cycle processes in pristine and impacted northern lakes

13. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team… • Erin Bayne (Biological Sc) • Cumulative ecological impacts of human activities on biodiversity • Wildlife behavioral, population, and community ecology • Ecological trade-off assessment • Inform and provide recommendations for biodiversity conservation • Stan Boutin (Biological Sc) • Human- and climate-induced ecological changes and their effects on wildlife phenotypic plasticity, evolution and population dynamics • Provide decision-makers with the information and tools necessary to make ecologically-informed landuse decisions • Conservation issues related to human landuse and climate change

14. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team… • Mark Boyce (Biological Sc) • Population-level mathematical and simulation models of ecological systems for wildlife conservation and management • Population viability analysis, resource selection functions, time series, and predator-prey models • Life history evolution and sexual selection of birds and mammals • Mark Lewis (Mathematical & Statistical Sc) • Mathematical biology and spatial ecology • Modeling space use, population spread in biological invasions, optimal strategies for biocontrol, and the effect of habitat fragmentation on species survival

15. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The U of Alberta research team… • Evelyn Merrill (Biological Sc) • Using remote sensing, GIS, and biotelemetry systems to study animal movement in heterogeneous landscapes • Foraging and nutritional ecology of ungulates, plant-herbivore interactions, and landscape modifications on wildlife populations • Linking small-scale processes to large-scale patterns in animal distribution and population dynamics

16. CREATE Environmental Innovation: The recruitment… • Graduate students interested in northern resource development and environmental sustainability and in completing thesis research enhanced by coursework and internship experience with industry, government, and/or aboriginal organizations • Once the candidate student-supervisor-project is identified: • complete and submit admission form @ • https://www.mcgill.ca/create-ei/files/create-ei/create_ei_admission_form_0.docx