Previous Environmental Science Talks

Dr. Kerri Finlay (Professor, University of Regina)

Climate and Land Use Effects on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Aquatic Ecosystems in the Northern Great Plains

Bio: Dr. Finlay is currently Professor and Co-Director of the Institute for Environmental Change and Society, and Past President of the Society of Canadian Aquatic Sciences. Her research focuses on aquatic ecology and biogeochemistry, investigating the role of Prairie lakes, wetland ponds, and reservoirs in the global carbon budget, and the effects of anthropogenic activities on water quality. She collaborates to bring social and political perspectives into research, through conflict, vulnerability, and adaptation analyses, as well as involving local communities and citizens through a Community-Based Water Quality Monitoring program

Fairo Foryuy (Postdoctoral Fellow at Shelley Hoover's lab, UofL)

Leveraging mountain ecosystems to address biodiversity questions in the Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot

Dr. Laird discussed his lab’s recent progress on the ecology and evolution of senescence, using tiny aquatic plants in the genus Lemna (duckweeds) as a lens to bring three themes into focus:

(1) Parental age effects: Does a parent’s age dictate its offspring’s fitness prospects?  

(2) Caloric restriction: Dietary caloric restriction extends lifespan in animals – does an analogous phenomenon occur in plants?

(3) Temporal scaling: Do intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms that alter the pace of senescence leave the shape of senescence intact?

Dr. Laird synthesized his findings across these themes to show how Lemna serves as a powerful model for addressing fundamental questions regarding the selective pressures and constraints that shape patterns of aging.

Within academia, resource constraints, competitive careerism, and performance-based metrics create incentives that prioritize personal and institutional prestige over core epistemic values such as transparency, openness, and fairness. I argue that scientists’ social behaviour is a central component of maintaining the epistemic values that inform scientific integrity.

My research examines perceptions of social norms in science among faculty and trainees (n = 615) across Alberta’s three major research universities. Preliminary findings reveal a clear tension between the behaviours scientists endorse as ideals and those enacted within everyday academic settings. Widening gaps between ideal and actual behaviour may encourage faculty and students to internalize problematic norms or disengage from academic careers altogether, raising concerns about personnel recruitment, institutional sustainability, and public engagement with science.

Social behaviour also profoundly shapes scientific training. A complementary personal social network analysis of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows (n = 93) demonstrated that professional development is deeply embedded in interpersonal dynamics. These networks exhibited substantial variability in social resources, and affective ties among members predicted satisfaction with academic support, research productivity, and overall program satisfaction. Together, these findings underscore how social behaviour can both challenge and sustain contemporary scientific culture, and suggest that strengthening scientific integrity and training outcomes depends, in part, on how scientists engage in their professional relationships.

Mountain glaciers are retreating rapidly worldwide, altering not only surface runoff but also subsurface hydrological processes that remain poorly quantified. In many high-elevation catchments, groundwater plays a critical role in sustaining streamflow during dry seasons, yet the extent to which glacier melt contributes to groundwater recharge, and where this water ultimately resurfaces, remains uncertain. In this talk, I present two contrasting approaches to estimating glacier–groundwater interactions in data-sparse mountain environments, drawing on case studies from the Langshisha basin in the Nepal Himalaya and the Quilcayhuanca basin in the Peruvian Andes. Using a combination of field observations, conceptual models, and numerical hydrological modelling, I show how glacier melt can constitute a substantial component of groundwater recharge and downstream water supply, even as glaciers decline. By comparing a complex coupled surface–groundwater modelling framework with a simpler, process-guided approach, this seminar highlights both the opportunities and limitations of current methods and discusses implications for mountain water security under future climate change.