Project Investigators: Joshua Thienpont and Adeyemi Olusola

Funding: Canada Foundation for Innovation

Term: 2024-2026

The project focuses on developing an understanding of several modes of landscape disturbance (permafrost thaw, sediment erosion changes, flood/drought impacts) that occur naturally in the environment but are altered by ongoing anthropogenic climate
change. The project utilizes innovative techniques in mapping, monitoring, and predicting environmental geohazards using in situ data, laboratory analyses, remote sensing/GIS techniques, and machine learning algorithms. The ability to integrate these modes of inquiry
provides a holistic view of environmental change due to landscape disturbance not afforded by focusing on only one data source. The research works to elucidate the impact of environmental legacies/memory, climate and land use/landcover change on landscapes in
transition, and directly enables the establishment of environmental information systems that play an invaluable role in developing proactive measures against geohazards. The approaches and outcomes of this study’s methodologies and outcomes can be extended to other landscapes in transition in Canada and beyond, which will go a long way in supporting stakeholder/ rightsholder decisions around climate change impacts and adaptation.