Funding to advance climate action
September 16, 2024
Understanding the past
Sophie Norris, assistant professor in the Department of Geography, has received $132,271 to create “The Geomorphology and Chronology Research Lab - A new technological research facility to determine the age of earth surface processes.”
Contemporary climatic change includes impacts with global consequences such as rising sea levels, decreased freshwater resources and enhanced erosion. But current observations of these effects on glacial environments only span a few decades, so scientists rely on reconstructions of the past to predict responses to future climate change.
Norris’s Geomorphology and Chronology Research (GCR) Lab will build precise geochronological records from regions of BC and Canada that were in the past encompassed by ice sheets and glaciers. Using radiometric dating of rock and organic material (including terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide and radiocarbon dating techniques), the facility will be foundational for our understanding of past glacial changes including glacial lake expansion and drainage, glacial recession and glacial erosion.
In the long term, the technology developed by Norris and her team will enable scientists to use the BC and Canadian landscape as a data-rich environment that offers records spanning centuries and even millennia. This will improve our ability to predict how glacial environments in Canada and globally will respond to future climatic change.
“This infrastructure,” adds Norris, “will also provide exceptional opportunities to train the next generation of BC and Canadian researchers at the forefront of climate science.”
Federal funding
The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) is a critical strategic investment tool designed to help institutions attract and retain the very best of today’s and tomorrow’s researchers.
On September 13, the Government of Canada announced nearly $86 million through CFI to support 316 research infrastructure projects at 47 institutions across the country. The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of National Revenue, made the announcement at the Université de Sherbrooke, on behalf of the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health.
Three 番茄社区 research teams, representing Social Sciences, Engineering and Science, have been awarded a total of $500,000 for equipment that will, in innovative and diverse ways, will advance climate and environmental action.