Research Day 2010
Research Day 2010 was held on Earth Day with eight research presentations by faculty and students of the Centre for Environment followed by presentations of graduate students' awards and the Ecomedia Natural City Multimedia Contest winners.
THU APRIL 22, 2010
10:00 a.m. to approx. 3:30 p.m. (includes lunch and refreshments)
FACULTY CLUB, 2nd floor, 41 Willcocks St. (east of Spadina Ave., north of College St.)
For enquiries, please contact Mona El-Haddad, 416-978-6526.
**************
PROGRAM SCHEDULE: (Please see below for abstracts and bios.)
10:00 a.m.
INGRID LEMAN STEFANOVIC, Professor and Director, Centre for Environment
Opening Remarks
10:10 a.m.
CHRIS KENNEDY, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering; Full member, Centre for Environment graduate faculty
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities (abstract and bio)
10:40 a.m.
TAJINDER SINGH, Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Forestry and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
Forecasting Volatility of World Carbon Markets (abstract and bio)
11:10 a.m.
STEPHEN SCHARPER, Associate Professor, Dept of Anthropology, U of T Mississauga; and Centre for Environment
From Community to Communion: The Natural City in Biotic and Cosmological Perspective (abstract and bio)
11:40 a.m.
ALICIA HARVEY, Hons B.A. student, Environmental Policy & Practice major;
MIKE LAWLER, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society major; DANIEL MCCAFFREY, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society, and History majors; and DEBRA WEINRYB, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society major
Promoting Environmental Stewardship Among Private Landowners:
Success Stories from Local Conservation Authorities (abstract and bios)
12:10 p.m. LUNCH
12:50 p.m.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS, Professor, Dept. of Chemical Eng and Applied Chemistry; Full member, Centre for Environment graduate faculty
New Frontiers in Bioremediation (abstract and bio)
1:20 p.m.
ELLIE FARAHANI, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Environment
The Study of Energy Conservation: Integrating Engineering and the Social Sciences (abstract and bio)
1:50 p.m.
SMITH SUNDAR, Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Forestry and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
The Use of Cellulose Fiber in Bio-based Composite Manufacturing:
Improving Orientation and Dispersion for Value Addition (abstract and bio)
2:20 p.m.
TYLER HUNT, M.A. candidate, Dept. of Geography and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
Big Wind in Small Town Ontario: Residents' Opinions and Perceptions of the
Wolfe Island Wind Farm, Frontenac County (abstract and bio)
2:50 p.m. PRESENTATION OF GRADUATE STUDENTS' AWARDS
3:00 p.m. PRESENTATION OF ECOMEDIA NATURAL CITY MULTIMEDIA CONTEST WINNERS
3:15 p.m. REFRESHMENTS
**********
ABSTRACTS AND BIOS
CHRIS KENNEDY, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering; Full member, Centre for Environment graduate faculty
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities
The world's population is now over 50% urban, and cities make an important contribution to national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Many cities are developing strategies to reduce their emissions. In this research, we ask how and why emissions differ between ten global cities (Bangkok, Barcelona, Cape Town, Denver, Geneva, London, Los Angeles, New York, Prague, and Toronto). This study shows how a balance of geophysical factors (climate, access to resources and gateway status) and technical factors (power generation, urban design and waste processing) determine the GHGs attributable to cities. Within the overall trends, however, there are differences between cities with more or less public transit; while personal income also impacts heating and industrial fuel use. By including upstream emissions from fuels, GHG emissions attributable to cities exceed those from direct end use by up to 25%. The findings should help foster inter-city learning on reducing GHG emissions.
Dr. Chris Kennedy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he teaches courses in Engineering Ecology, Infrastructure Economics and the Design of Infrastructure for Sustainable Cities. His work involves applying principles of Industrial Ecology to the design of urban infrastructure systems, including buildings, water systems, and urban transportation. Amongst his publications are studies of urban metabolism, and processes for developing sustainable urban transportation systems. His wider work includes contributions to probability theory, regional economics, contaminant transport and engineering education. Dr. Kennedy holds degrees in Civil Engineering from Imperial College, London (B.Eng.) and the University of Waterloo (M.A.Sc., Ph.D.), as well as a diploma in Economics from the University of Warwick, U.K. and an M.B.A. from the University of Toronto.
TAJINDER SINGH, Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Forestry and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
Forecasting Volatility of World Carbon Markets
Volatility of carbon markets plays a big role in making decision of investing in the carbon portfolios. It affects the volume of trading, which in turn affects the environment and hence has a bigger cost or benefit to the society as a whole. Forecasts of carbon price volatility can be important inputs into macro-econometric models and market risk assessment calculations like value at risk. However, relatively little work has been done on modeling and forecasting carbon market price volatility from an econometric or risk management angle. This is unfortunate given the importance of carbon in the present climate change scenario. This presentation evaluates the performance of various econometric models for predicting price volatility of carbon in different markets. Simple models such as random walk and historical averages and complex models like ARCH, GARCH and non-linear models were tested for the compliance markets of EU and voluntary market of Chicago. The results show that different carbon markets witness different volatility patterns and hence separate econometric models are required for forecasting volatility for each of these markets. The only similarity in volatility behaviour was found between EU spot and the options market. The findings may be useful in decision-making relating to banking and borrowing of carbon credits at the firm level, and choosing between carbon tax and the market based instruments at the policy level.
Tajinder P. Singh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Forestry and the Centre for Environment's collaborative program in environmental studies. His research relates to environmental economics and its application to model world carbon markets. Specifically, his thesis focuses on the carbon market volatility, market integration and agent based market simulation. Tajinder holds a Masters degree in GIS and Remote Sensing from the Netherlands and a M.Sc. in Forestry and Physics from India. He is also a member of the Indian Forest Service.
STEPHEN SCHARPER, Associate Professor, Dept of Anthropology, U of T Mississauga; and Centre for Environment
From Community to Communion: The Natural City in Biotic and Cosmological Perspective
In this presentation, implications of Leopold's "land ethic" will be discussed as well as Thomas Berry's idea of a universal "communion of subjects" for the notion of ecological integrity within an urban context. As the ecological consequences of sprawling and increasingly poverty-stricken urban spaces are addressed with more frequency in literature on sustainable cities, there are signs that a significant ethical transformation concerning human relationships with the natural world is emerging in the process. The natural city concept is, in a sense, part of this "evolution of ethics," to borrow Aldo Leopold's term, and holds the potential of bringing together pragmatic, ontological, and cosmological issues in cogent ways as it attempts to imagine a new way of being urban in the world.
Stephen Bede Scharper is Associate Professor with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and the Centre for Environment at the University of Toronto, where he is also cross-appointed with the Centre for the Study of Religion. He is author of Redeeming the Time: A Political Theology of the Environment (Continuum, 1997) and co-author with his wife Hilary Cunningham of The Green Bible (Orbis, 1993) revised and reissued by Lantern Books in 2002. He is also co-editor, with Professor Ingrid Stefanovic, of The Natural City: Re-envisioning Human Settlements, forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press. His research and teaching is in the areas of Catholic social ethics, the ethics of violence and nonviolence, environmental ethics, and religious ethics and ecology, which he teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of Toronto.
ALICIA HARVEY, Hons B.A. student, Environmental Policy & Practice major; MIKE LAWLER, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society major; DANIEL MCCAFFREY, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society, and History majors; and DEBRA WEINRYB, Hons B.A. student, Environment & Society major.
Promoting Environmental Stewardship Among Private Landowners: Success Stories from Local Conservation Authorities
Ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, watershed services, and wildlife habitat, play a critical role in all dimensions of human well-being, but economic and population growth have contributed to a sharp decline in most ecosystem services. These ecosystem services are generally public goods, and therefore pose the additional challenge of public good provisions especially when these services are provided by private landowners. Conservation Authorities (CAs) in Ontario have developed many Environmental Stewardship programs to provide monetary and non-monetary incentives to private landowners to continue and enhance the provision of ecosystem services.
This year, in the Centre for Environment's environmental research course ENV421H, groups of senior undergraduate students conducted research on various incentive mechanisms used by CAs as a part of their respective Environmental Stewardship programs in Southern Ontario. This research ranged from an examination of the design and implementation of incentive mechanisms, marketing incentive based ecosystem service protection, factors affecting participation in such voluntary programs, and a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis of programs. Highlights from selected projects and an overview of findings will be presented.
Alicia Harvey is completing her fourth year of a Honours B.A. program majoring Environmental Policy & Practice. While attending high school in The Hague she completed an International Baccalaureate degree. This year she researched the Huron County Clean Water Project. She plans to move to California to focus on agriculture and water conservation efforts.
Mike Lawler is a fourth year Honours B.A. student majoring in Environment and Society and minoring in History and Geography. His areas of interest include Canadian agricultural issues and the study of corporate involvement in the environmental movement. He serves as the Coordinator of the Environmental Student's Union, and volunteers with Evergreen in his spare time.
Daniel McCaffrey will complete his Honours B.A. this year, majoring in History and Environmental & Society and minoring in Political Science. Daniel will begin an integrated program in Law, Environmental Studies and Land Use Planning next year jointly with York University and Osgoode Hall.
Debra Weinryb is completing her fourth year of a Honours B.A., double-majoring in Environment & Society and Psychology. She has balanced her participation in environmental research alongside her extracurricular role as an organizer of arts and culture campus programming. She seeks to integrate her interests in social justice and environmental issues as she builds her career.
ELIZABETH EDWARDS, Professor, Dept. of Chemical Eng and Applied Chemistry; Full member, Centre for Environment graduate faculty
New Frontiers in Bioremediation
Groundwater contamination is a serious threat to global health and prosperity. Chlorinated solvents are widely used as industrial degreasers, dry-cleaning agents and precursors in chemical synthesis, and therefore are common groundwater contaminants. Owing to their toxicity, even small spills render groundwater unsuitable for use, and cleanup is typically a costly and long-term undertaking.
Recently, a fascinating group of subsurface microorganisms, called Dehalococcoides, has been discovered that can dechlorinate the dry-cleaning solvent tetrachloroethene and the common industrial solvent trichloroethene to the benign product ethene. Remarkably, these organisms obtain energy for growth from dechlorination and several successful demonstrations of bioaugmentation, where an aquifer is inoculated with culture, have lead to the development of a commercial market for such dechlorinating cultures. The hunt is on to further explore nature's diversity to discover microbes capable of detoxifying a broader range of contaminants. New molecular biology tools are helping us understand how these microbes make a living, and how we can take advantage of their abilities to clean up the environment.
Dr. Elizabeth Edwards is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto. She holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Chemical Engineering from McGill University, Montreal, and a Ph.D. degree (1993) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. Dr. Edwards is internationally known for her work on anaerobic bioremediation, the application of molecular biology and metagenomics to uncover novel microbial processes, and the transition of laboratory research into commercial practice to develop bioremediation and bioaugmentation strategies for groundwater pollutants. She has over 60 peer-reviewed journal publications and several prestigious awards including an NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation with Geosyntec Consultants (2009), a Killam Research Fellowship (2008), a Premier's Research Excellence Award (2003), and an NSERC Women's Faculty Award (1995).
ELLIE FARAHANI, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Environment
The Study of Energy Conservation: Integrating Engineering and the Social Sciences
Studies have shown that electricity consumption can be reduced by up to 15% in residential settings, through effective conservation strategies. These studies often frame the benefits mainly in terms of dollars saved. However, there are two criticisms to this approach: firstly, studies have shown that people tend to over-discount financial figures in the distant future; secondly, this form of feedback does not directly trigger conservation attitudes. Thus, when financial or other external incentives are removed, behavioral changes will likely not persist.
The Centre for Environment has collaborated with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering to research the effectiveness of energy feedback strategies that align with conservation attitudes rather than dollars saved. By bridging Temporal Construal Theory and energy consumption feedback literature, this research provides empirical support for a theoretical mechanism of how information presentation may influence behavior. This research will also generate an ethical guideline for the design of feedback.
Dr. Ellie Farahani has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Toronto and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management. She has monitored greenhouse gases in the high Arctic and worked on the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model, part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments of climate change. She has been working for the SPARC project (Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate Change International Project Office) of the UN World Climate Research Programme. She has also been collaborating with the University of Toronto Sustainability Office. Ellie is certain that there are ways to build and maintain a prosperous sustainable world for future generations. Her specific focus is on developing effective international climate research and adaptation projects. As part of her Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Environment, she has been working on a Centre research project which brings together researchers and students from the engineering and social sciences to study Conservation Demand Management from a holistic perspective.
SMITH SUNDAR, Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Forestry and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
The Use of Cellulose Fiber in Bio-based Composite Manufacturing: Improving Orientation and Dispersion for Value Addition
Cellulose is the most plentiful, natural, biodegradable and renewable raw material available for versatile applications. Recently there has been interest in substituting cellulose in place of inorganic reinforcers or fillers in polymer based composites. This transformation is well sought after in the wake of stringent environmental concerns. These bio-based composites have been in soaring demand in the automotive industry and in manufacturing of semi-structural furniture. However, as in the case of all composite materials, the mechanical properties of cellulose-based composites are not only governed by factors such as fiber length and dispersion of fiber in the polymer matrix, but also the orientation of fiber in the matrix, which is usually uncontrolled. The objective of this research is to combine concepts of hydroxyl group (OH-) modification of cellulose using a ferromagnetic entity and achieve optimal orientation and dispersion of cellulose fibers in the polymer matrix, by subjecting the modified cellulose to an electro-magnetic field. The presence of a ferromagnetic entity in cellulose structure is expected to provide an opportunity to manipulate orientation of fiber by virtue of paramagnetic properties of Fe2+ions in an electro magnetic field. The findings may provide a real world solution in enhancing mechanical properties of bio-based composites and their commercialization. The findings may also provide a practical solution to property enhancement in composite manufacturing and other potential applications of magnetic cellulose in magnetographic printing and manufacture of security paper. These innovative products not only impart environmental benefits but also minimize utilization and dependence of petroleum based polymers.
Smith Sundar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Forestry's Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing and the Centre for Environment's collaborative program in environmental studies. Under the supervision of Dr. Mohini Sain, Director of the Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing and Professor of Forestry, his research focuses on cellulose based biopolymer composites for manufacturing value added products. Smith is originally from Kerala, a southern province in India and completed his Masters in wood chemistry and composites in a combined program with The University of Idaho and Washington State University.
TYLER HUNT, M.A. candidate, Dept. of Geography and Centre for Environment (Environmental Studies Program)
Big Wind in Small Town Ontario: Residents' Opinions and Perceptions of the Wolfe Island Wind Farm, Frontenac County
Wind energy is increasingly promoted by the Ontario government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and diversify regional electricity systems. Although garnering political and financial support, wind energy has encountered cases of mixed local reactions and social resistance in communities with pending developments. As discovered in other countries, public perceptions of wind energy are crucial socio-political factors in determining wind energy's success. However, minimal scholarship has examined the complexities of public opinion formation and wind energy in Canadian communities. This research focussed on residents of Wolfe Island, Ontario, and explored their perceptions of a local wind energy development operational in 2009. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews and provided a case study of the complexities of residents' opinions of wind energy. Research findings indicated that values of trust and transparency in local decision-making, as well as community-based environmental and social considerations, are critical attributes in solidifying individuals' perspectives of wind energy.
Tyler Hunt will convocate in June 2010 with a M.A. from the Department of Geography and the Centre for Environment's collaborative program in environmental studies. His research interests focused on renewable energy (particularly wind and solar energy) and the related social and economic considerations that are necessary to grow these industries. He spent his internship working for the Toronto Renewable Energy Cooperative, where he helped in the development stages of the co-op's "Our Power" solar facilitation program. Transitioning out of graduation, Tyler has stayed busy through climate change research contracts with Havenbrook Realty and database management work with the Recycling Council of Ontario. He is eagerly pursuing positions in the sustainable energy field and is excited about Ontario's new energy future. In his spare time, Tyler enjoys jogging near the Exhibition Place wind turbine and becoming hypnotized by its soothing appearance. He also enjoys pestering his parents about putting solar panels on their cottage roof.