Climate change threatens life on Earth as we know it and requires urgent action. Oceans are central to climate change. Not only do they regulate global climate and absorb most of the heat released by humanity, they also offer a portfolio of solutions to help combat climate change.
Motivated by our passion for the ocean, and recognition that climate change now threatens marine ecosystems and coastal communities around the world, we are working to advance understanding of the impacts of climate change in the ocean, and to inform and catalyze effective ocean conservation solutions.
We are marine scientists with diverse expertise in ecology, evolution, statistics, modelling, molecular biology, paleoecology, scientific diving, and more. United by our pragmatic optimism and our collaborative spirit, we are relentless in our pursuit of innovative science to robustly answer the questions we care most about.
Training tomorrow’s climate solutions leaders
Meeting the challenges of the climate change crisis means that every job should now be considered a climate job. Climate change and its solutions are, however, inherently place-based, with communities experiencing different impacts and having assets, challenges, and opportunities to respond. Successfully accelerating solutions thus requires that technological and scientific advances are integrated with their social, cultural, and economic contexts. Tomorrow’s climate leaders will therefore need to have a contextual understanding of proposed solutions and be adept at working across disciplinary boundaries and sectors. Through a new graduate student and post-doctoral fellow training program - Coastal Climate Solutions Leaders (CCSL) - I and a team of professors at UVic aim deliver enriched interdisciplinary and intersectoral training to prepare the next generation of leaders with the knowledge, experience, and skills needed to rise to the challenge of climate change.
To what extent can Canada’s oceans serve as natural climate solutions?
The 2019 High Level Panel for A Sustainable Ocean Economy report concluded that oceans could contribute to >20% of the required climate solutions to reach the global Paris Agreement targets. Yet despite having the world’s largest coastline, Canada has not yet included oceans in its climate solutions portfolio. We aim to change that.
With NSERC Alliance support, we are conducting a national assessment of the current and future capacity for Canada's three oceans to serve as natural climate solutions.
How are marine heatwaves impacting coastal marine ecosystems?
Climate change is amplifying the intensity and frequency of marine heatwaves. Over the past decade, our team documented the impacts of a globally unprecedented heatwave on coral reefs in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. We are now working to understand the impacts of that same heatwave on kelp forests along British Columbia’s coastline. Our discoveries are changing understanding of how ecosystems respond to and recover from these events.
Working in partnership with academic, eNGO, First Nations and government collaborators, we apply a suite of tools - field observations and experiments, molecular analyses and bioinformatics, stable isotopes, interviews, historical ecology, meta-analyses, and synthesis of large data sets using statistical models - to answer these and other pressing ocean climate change questions. We are committed to making science a more equitable, diverse and inclusive enterprise, to open science and data sharing, and to engagement with the public and policy-makers aimed at enhancing climate change understanding and action.
Lab News
Julia is interviewed for two articles surrounding the current global coral bleaching event. Check them out on our media page!, April 2024
Our kelp team has a new paper out! Check out former post-doc, Sam Starko’s, newest paper and the article the team wrote for The Conversation!, April 2024
We are hiring! Do you want to work in kelp restoration and blue carbon research then check out this job ad and apply by April 15th!, March 2024
We start off the new year by welcoming Prof. Kelton McMahon, a visiting professor from the University of Rhode Island for the next six months. And to Sara Hudda, a co-op student from Dalhousie University. We are excited to have both of them with us for the next few months!, Jan 2024
PhD student, Matt Csordas’ first paper came out today on the cutest kelp, Postelsia palmaeformis, showing that despite marine heatwaves in the past years, the population has remained stable at its northern range. Check it out here for more info (or on our publications page for the PDF)!, October 2023
We had a ton of fun doing team building activities and the adventure course at WildPlay this past weekend for our annual retreat! Check out the photos of what we got ourselves into here., October 2023
Our newest paper from Kiritimati is out! Led by former Post-Doc, Sam Starko, this paper highlights impacts of marine heatwaves previously unknown. Check out the article in The Conversation written by Sam and Julia, the Radio Canada coverage, or the UVic article covering the paper., August 2023
Photo Credits: Kiritimati coral reef (Kieran Cox), Kelp & boat (Kevin Bruce), Estuary (Michael Snyder), Kelp (Goya Ngan), Julia sampling coral (Kristina Tietjen), Kelp (Goya Ngan), BC coast (Kristina Tietjen)
“We stand now where two roads diverge but unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road - the one less traveled by - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring