News & Events

May 2, 2013
Enbridge spill risk more than 90%, SFU report says
A new report from Simon Fraser University claims there is at least a 90 percent probability of an oil tanker spill if the Enbridge plan for the Northern Gateway pipeline goes ahead. The report’s lead author is Tom Gunton, director of the resource and environmental planning programme and former deputy environment minister for Mike Harcourt’s NDP provincial government.

April 10, 2013
Canadian Nobel Laureate Testifies Keystone XL Pipeline Refusal an Important Step in Addressing Climate Change - MARKETWIRED
Dr. Mark Jaccard of British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University will testify in front of the U.S. Congress Subcommittee on Energy and Power today that President Obama must reject TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline if meaningful action is to be taken to prevent a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperature.

March 23, 2013
Salomon awarded Pew Fellowship
Anne Salomon, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, has been awarded one of five 2013 Pew Fellowships in Marine Conservation to conduct a synthesis of the ecological and societal impacts of sea otter recovery in North America.

March 14, 2013
CARBON POLLUTION – VANCOUVER SUN
An op-ed entitled PR part of the oil pipeline business by SFU professor Mark Jaccard was featured in the Vancouver Sun concerning carbon pollution projects.

February 13, 2013
Clark government’s prosperity fund raises questions – VANCOUVER SUN
Mark Jaccard, a professor of resource management at SFU, was quoted in an article concerning Christy Clark’s government assumptions that it can raise billions through liquefied natural gas. The province intends to raise $260 billion over 30 years through direct taxes paid by the LNG facilities and royalties from the upstream natural gas producers. Jaccard also questioned the underlying logic of developing LNG.
“We can get really rich maximizing the flow of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, which is destroying our world at an accelerating rate. So let’s base our economic development on this accelerating carbon pollution path,” he said.

February 1, 2013
B.C. laying groundwork for electric car surge with charging stations - VANCOUVER SUN
John Axsen, a professor with SFU’s energy and materials research group, says there is little chance that electric car use will grow rapidly, even as technology improves, price comes down, and charging infrastructure is built.
“If we don’t have proper environmental policies in place - whether it’s strong enough carbon taxes or vehicle emission standards, or other measures to move us toward a true low-carbon society – electric cars won’t get beyond that very small niche market of enthusiasts,” said Axsen.

January 29, 2013
CLIMATE POLICY – THE WALRUS
SFU environmental economist Marc Jaccard’s article was featured on The Walrus magazine. Jaccard mentions that he spent most of his career helping governments here and abroad design policies to reduce carbon pollution. He states that climate policies should focus on reducing carbon pollution, not on punishing the fossil fuel–dependent economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland.

September 17, 2012
Sustainability Award
Sustainability professor Mark Jaccard, was the subject of a New Westminster NewsLeader article, about him being named one of 50 Canadians named to the Clean50 list of outstanding leaders in sustainable development.

August 1, 2012
Attracting tourists
BC has seen fewer tourists than usual this year, right from the beginning of the summer, says Peter Williams, Director of the Centre for Tourism Policy and Research, in a Royal City Record article.However, he says local businesses and agencies can attract visitors from neighbouring communities with festivals and unique shopping and outdoor activities.

July 11, 2012
Enbridge’s Northern Gateway oil sands
Tom Gunton, Director of the Planning program of SFU’s Resource and Environmental Management graduate program, was on CBC’s The Early Edition discussing the potential of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline traversing BC.

July 8, 2012
Researchers in Haida Gwaii are studying the effects that a growing population of rats has on the surrounding ecosystem, reports the Globe and Mail. As the rats spread from island to island, the Haida Gwaii seabird populations began to plummet, and SFU professor Anne Salomon has been studying how this affects the surrounding ecosystems.
Salomon, from the School of Resource and Environmental Management, has been looking specifically at how the decline of seabirds has affected the marine environment.

July 3, 2012
A string of media outlets carried a story on SFU research that has found a widespread decrease in the number of adult sockeye salmon produced per spawner, for at least the past decade along the western coast of North America.
Published today (July 3) in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, and co-authored by Randall Peterman, a professor in SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, and former post-doctoral fellow Brigitte Dorner, the study traces the productivity of 64 sockeye salmon populations across B.C., Washington and Alaska.
The researchers found that the decline in productivity of Fraser River sockeye salmon was not unique to that river system, and that productivity has also declined rapidly in many other populations since the 1990s.

July 3, 2012
Sockeye productivity dramatically down in B.C., northwest U.S. states: study
Sockeye salmon spawning on the rivers and streams of Washington state, British Columbia and southeastern Alaska have been producing dramatically fewer adults, especially in the last two decades, a new study suggests.
In one example, the Fraser River’s early Stuart sockeye run dropped to about three adults for every spawning sockeye by the mid-2000s, compared to 20 adults per spawner in the 1960s, said Randall Peterman, co-author of the study.

June 27, 2012
Three SFU researchers recently won an award for the “Second-Best Paper” at the Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis) in Vienna, Europe’s top visualization conference. Torsten Möller (Computing Science), Randall Peterman (School of Resource and Environmental Management), their collaborating Master’s student (Maryam Booshehrian), and UBC Computer Science colleague, Tamara Munzner, won this award based on the novel visualization software called Vismon.
Vismon was developed within the Climate Change Impacts Research Group, a inter-disciplinary research project funded by SFU’s Community Trust Endowment Fund (CTEF). Partial funding was also provided by Alaska’s Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association.
Vismon is a software package that was designed to support the decision-making process of fisheries managers. Vismon supports analysis of trade-offs by providing a flexible, interactive way for managers to explore complex quantitative results. Fisheries managers at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are currently using Vismon in their decision making process along with their traditional methods as part of the Sustainable Salmon Initiative in the AYK (Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim) region.

June 21, 2012
In The Globe and Mail article, SFU professor Mark Jaccard questioned BC Premier Christy Clark for using the label “clean energy” to describe the natural gas that would be used to power three liquefied natural gas plants in northern BC.

June 13, 2012
Biology professor Jonathan Moore, who leads the lab Beakes and Phillis work in, says his team is doing all it can to reveal all the snake head fish’s secrets.

June 8, 2012
In a Burnaby Now article, Peter Williams, director of the Centre for Tourism Policy and Research, says BC is already seeing fewer tourists than usual this year.

June 7, 2012
Dorian Turner, REM recent fish grad, is featured in the SFU News article titled “REM fish fan eyes threatened waterways“.

June 4, 2012
In a Yahoo.com article, sustainable energy professor Mark Jaccard talks about the troubles Canada faces in trying to meet their emission targets made at the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change. He says the industry does not need to shut down and they can continue running current facilities, but can’t expand if the government wants to meet their targets.

May 17, 2012
Thomas Gunton, director of the Resource and Environmental Planning Program at SFU, wrote a letter to the editor of the Victoria Times Colonist criticizing the BC government’s stance on the Enbridge pipeline.

April 28, 2012
REM student Aimée Brisebois’s poster titled “The Relationship between the Bioconcentration Factor (BCF), Bioaccumulation Factor (BAF), and the Trophic Magnification Factor (TMF)” won the award for Best Master’s Poster Presentation at the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) - Pacific Northwest Chapter Conference.

March 23, 2012
Prehistoric fisheries offer clues to sustainable catch
SFU researchers Anne Salomon and Amy Groesbeck have been studying the ancient “clam gardens” in the territory of the Kwakwak’awakw and K’ómoks First Nations along the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Such structures were built and maintained for 2000 years, from Washington State to Alaska, until European settlers disrupted the practice.

February 28, 2012
Mark Jaccard: You can’t take the tar sands out of the climate equation

January 23, 2012
SFU avalanche expert warns North Shore Mountains are ripe for a fall
SFU’s Pascal Haegeli, a Swiss-born man with his Ph.D. in avalanche science, said Monday that conditions on the North Shore mountains are ripe for snow to come tumbling down.

January 20, 2012
Rare monkey discovered
Brent Loken, a researcher from SFU is making international headlines for making a historic discovery in Borneo. Brian Coxford of Global TV BC reports.

January 12, 2012
Canadian Association of Planning Students 2012 Conference and AGM – PLANNING HORIZONS: The Edge, Future, and Potential of Planning
The national CAPS-ACÉAU conference is the premier event for planning students from across Canada. Join us in 2012 in the beautiful and inspiring setting of Vancouver, BC for a three day conference to share your research and projects, network with planning students and professionals from across Canada and the Pacific Northwest, and explore leading planning initiatives in the Greater Vancouver region. Keynote speakers include: Larry Beasley, Julian Agyeman, and Gordon Price.

January 5, 2012
48% support for northern B.C. pipeline, says poll
Near half of British Columbians support plans for a pipeline to transport crude oil from Alberta to the West Coast port of Kitimat for shipping, a new poll by Ipsos suggests, but most also say they don’t really know much about it.

September 29, 2011
Climate Change will cost billions: Report
A recent climate change report issued by the government highlights a number of cost issues that will impact us both financially and environmentally. Dr. Karen Kohfeld, Assistant Professor in Climate, Resource, and Global Change, anticipates the sea level rising around the coast of Canada in the coming century. Much of the impact will involve the cost of health, property damage, and the extinction of some species.

Summer 2011
Learning the Tools of the Trade
Luke Halpin, graduate student from Simon Fraser University, is attending a well-known Sound Analysis Workshop in September 2011. Currently, he is working on the Haida Gwaii islands, the breeding grounds for 1.5 million nesting seabirds. He hopes to use sound analysis to help conserve seabirds in Canada. By recording target species, Luke anticipates that it will provide the baseline data to help him estimate populations on unsurveyed islands, and provide valuable information about how rapidly seabird populations recover.
A description of Luke Halpin’s research was also published in the Leverhulme Trust Report 2010 on page 34.

May 17, 2011
SFU student research scores Trudeau Scholarships
Simon Fraser University doctoral students Alana Gerecke (English) and Brent Loken (Resource and Environmental Management) are trailblazing new ways of sustaining and enriching communities at opposite ends of the world.

May 17, 2011
Why do consumers buy electric cars?
Canadian researcher based at University of California wins prestigious international award for identifying influences that shape sustainable mobility decisions. Dr. Jonn Axsen is an Assistant Professor with REM starting in August 2011.

May 10, 2011
PICS enlists SFU in climate change research
Simon Fraser University (SFU) researchers, Mark Jaccard, Chris Bataille and Mark Roseland, are involved in 10 of 27 new British Columbia-led climate change research projects funded by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS).

March 21, 2011
Canadian Avalanche Victims Die More quickly than Swiss: study
Pascal Haegeli, an avalanche consultant and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University’s School for Resource and Environmental Management, was the lead researcher in a study released today by the Canadian Medical Association Journal…

March 21, 2011
Simon Fraser University to host the 2012 Canadian Association of Planning Students – L’Association Canadienne des Étudiants en Aménagement et en Urbanisme (CAPS-ACÉAU) Conference.
The current Board of Directors spent 12 hours, over three separate meetings, extensively reviewing and considering the applications. The proposals were evaluated based on the criteria outline in the Request for Proposals document issued February 6th, 2011. We are very pleased to announce that the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University has been selected to host the CAPS‐ACÉAU Conference in 2012!

February 6, 2011
Jordan Benner. Masters Student. “Best Talk” Award — for the talk best exemplifying the theme of the CONFOR 2011 Conference: Ecosystems in perspective: integrating environment, society, and economy. Talk title: “Community forests, tenure systems, and local benefits: can we design sustainability in the forest sector?”

February 6, 2011
Rachel White. Masters Student. “Best Poster” Award. CONFOR 2011 Conference: Ecosystems in perspective: integrating environment, society, and economy. Poster title: “Old Growth Stumps as Islands of Habitat: Response to Restoration on Lyell Island, Haida Gwaii.”

December 6, 2010
Fish Survey
SFU resource and environmental management student Adam King is surveying anglers in the Okanagan on behalf of the Freshwater Fishing Society of B.C. The survey will provide a better “understanding of the trade-offs people will make, such as between options of fishing quality, site access, accommodation, launch facilities, motor types, calm or busy experience,” said the Kelowna Capital News.

December 8, 2010
Climate change may cause winds to falter.
Brad Griffin and Karen Kohfeld from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and colleagues have shown that climate change can sometimes bring about localized changes such as a drop in wind speed.

December 1, 2010
Karen Kohfeld of SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management (Canada Research Chair in Climate, Resource, and Global Change) was on The Early Edition show (Rick Cluff) on CBC Radio, talking about wind speeds along the West coast are in decline. Podcast (2.3MB)

December 1, 2010
The Vancouver Sun: Climate change takes wind out of energy sails
SFU researchers finds wind speeds slowed since 1950s
Featuring Karen Kohfeld, Andy Cooper and Brad Griffin.

November 27, 2010
Through the C.D. Howe Institute, SFU environmental economics professor Mark Jaccard released a study this week explaining how Canada could tax carbon emissions and return the money to the emitting provinces to cut taxes, reports The National Post. Full story.

November 26, 2010
Karen Kohfeld of SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management (Canada Research Chair in Climate, Resource, and Global Change) was on Evolution 107.9 show talking about declining speeds. MP3 Audio (13.7MB)

November 25, 2010
Scientists are getting worried there may not be enough food for wild salmon and hatchery-raised salmon. Randall Peterman, a professor in SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, told McClatchy Newspapers this could lead to a reduction in wild salmon stocks. Full story.

November 25, 2010
The Globe and Mail reported on a new study that said “a federal carbon tax or emissions-trading system could easily be designed so it doesn’t hurt the carbon-intensive economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan.” SFU environmental economist Mark Jaccard, who co-wrote the report, said it’s time Ottawa set out its carbon-reduction policies. Full story.

November 24, 2010
SFU environmental economist Mark Jaccard is a nominee for The Globe and Mail’s list of 25 Transformational Canadians. He is a prominent leader in sustainable energy policy and “has spent the past 25 years working to prevent climate change, conveying the urgent need for regulations and energy policies that will prevent greenhouse gas emissions.” Full story.

October 6, 2010
Randall Peterman of SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management (Canada Research Chair in Fisheries Risk Assessment and Management) was on the BC Almanac show (Mark Forsythe) on CBC Radio, talking about a study showing the Pacific Ocean is becoming “overcrowded with salmon.” Peterman also spoke with AM1150 Radio in Kelowna. Podcast (8.3MB)

October 3, 2010
The Globe and Mail: North Pacific ‘overcrowded’ with salmon as population soars

September 23, 2010
Jaccard wins Sterling Prize
Environmental economist Mark Jaccard, whose work on sustainable energy and climate policy has garnered international acclaim—and criticism, has won SFU’s 2010 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy…