Upcoming webinar: When Fire Meets Water
We’re talking with experts about healthy watersheds as a solution for landscape-scale wildfire resilience.
Please join us on Monday, June 16th 12:00 – 1:30 PM PST on Zoom (register here) for a lively panel discussion! This is the first of two webinars as a part of our Fire Files series. Thank you to the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) for their support in making these webinars happen.
In British Columbia, the four most severe fire seasons on record have occurred in the past eight years. During this time, the reality of fire as a landscape-scale process has become increasingly evident. What were once localized impacts and costs have become regional or even national-scale catastrophes, affecting society as a whole.
Managing fire risk is complicated not only by the scale of the fires but also by the fact that local conditions—such as topography, land use, and weather—are the primary factors influencing fire behavior. Discussions on how to manage fire risk at large scales are advancing rapidly in coastal BC, where communities are frequently located within or near the wildland-urban interface where fire risk is high.
If you register, and are not able to attend the live webinar, then we can send you the recording.
Join our panel as they consider the intersections between social (local) and environmental priorities (regional) through watershed planning. Key elements of this discussion include:
- Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!
- Source water protection: What is it and why should fire be a key consideration?
- The fire-forest-water nexus: Healthy watersheds as a potential solution (including the role of beavers).
- Landscape thinking and jurisdictional opportunities.
This discussion will be moderated by Dr. Ruth Waldick, Ph.D., lead scientist of Transition Salt Spring’s Climate Adaptation Research Lab (CARL).
We are pleased to be introduce the expert panel that will be leading this conversation
François-Nicolas Robinne, PhD (he/him)
Forest Hydrologist, Government of Alberta
François-Nicolas (François) is a geographer with interests in freshwater science, forest ecology, disaster risk reduction, and geomatics. François completed his PhD in forest management at the University of Alberta, where his thesis focused on wildfire risks to water security at a global scale, a topic that he kept working on during his postdoc with Global Water Futures, although with a greater focus on Canadian issues. François spent several years at the Canadian Forest Service, where he worked as a research scientist analyzing post-fire risks to drinking water supply. He also worked on aquatic habitat monitoring at the Pacific Salmon Foundation. He recently started a forest hydrologist position with the Government of Alberta.
Oliver M. Brandes, PhD (he/him)
Co-director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance
Oliver M. Brandes is an economist and lawyer by training and an interdisciplinarian by design. He is the co-director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, based at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies, where he leads the award-winning POLIS Water Sustainability Project and the POLIS Wildfire Resilience Project. His work focuses on water sustainability, watershed security, sustainable resource management, wildfire resilience, public policy development, and ecologically based legal and institutional reform.
Read more about Oliver.
Andrea Barnett, MPP (she/her)
Wildfire Project Manager, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance
Andrea grew up in Secwépemc territory and relishes working at the intersections of people, policy, and practice. She and her family live and work on their ranch, where they have seen the catastrophic implications of climate change and wildfire up close. A policy analyst by training, Andrea has experience working with the B.C. ranching sector, as an instructor in the Natural Resource Science faculty at Thompson Rivers University, and in land, water, and wildlife conservation where she has worked for non-government organizations.
Craig Stewart, MSc (he/him)
Vice-President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, Insurance Bureau of Canada
Craig Stewart leads national work on disaster resilience and climate change at Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) – the trade association representing the property and casualty insurance industry in Canada. He co-chairs the National Advisory Table on Disaster Resilience and Security which advises federal Ministers on development of Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy and disaster risk reduction generally. He is considered one of Canada’s foremost experts on climate adaptation, disaster risk and nature-based solutions and has testified at numerous Senate and House of Commons Committees as well as to federal, provincial and territorial Ministerial meetings repeatedly over the past decade.
We hope that you will join us for this interdisciplinary and topical panel discussion!
If you register, and are not able to attend the live webinar, then we can send you the recording.
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