Mountain Research

Sherpa script on stones below Mount Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam, Nepal

Sherpa script on stones below Mount Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam, Nepal

I have conducted mountain research projects with local and Indigenous communities around the world, have led major mountain assessment initiatives, and have made unique conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions to mountain studies.

The Canadian Mountain Assessment - Role: Founder & Project Leader

The Canadian Mountain Assessment (CMA) provides a first-of-its-kind look at what we know, do not know, and need to know about mountain systems in Canada. The multi-chapter assessment report is based on insights from First Nations, Métis, and Inuit knowledges of mountains, as well as findings from an extensive assessment of pertinent academic literature. The CMA’s inclusive knowledge co-creation approach aims to bring these multiple forms of evidence together in ways that enhance our collective understanding of mountains in Canada, while also respecting and maintaining the integrity of different knowledge systems. The assessment is the result of over three years of work, during which time the initiative played an important role in connecting and cultivating relationships between over 80 mountain knowledge holders from across Canada. In addition to enhancing appreciation for the diversity and significance of mountains in Canada, the CMA provides insights into applied reconciliation efforts in a major knowledge assessment context.

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Climbing Through Climate Change - Role: Supervisor/Contributing Researcher

Climate change is rapidly transforming the mountain cryosphere with significant implications for climbing and mountaineering activities, as well as guides and communities that depend on earnings from mountain tourism and recreation. While such issues are increasingly well studied in Europe, cognate work in North America is extremely limited. These studies address this gap by providing the first examination of the impacts of climate change on ice climbing and ice climbing guides, as well as foundational work on mountaineering and climate change in the Canadian Rockies. Each study utilizes transdiciplinary methods that bring insights from the natural and social sciences together with the perspectives of climbers and mountain guides.

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Closing the Adaptation Gap in Mountain Regions - Role: Lead Researcher

Mountain people live at the frontlines of climate change, where warming rates that outpace the global average are driving significant changes in mountain environments and the ecosystem services they provide. These changes are exacerbating the socio-economic difficulties faced by many mountain communities, and are already leading to consequential vulnerabilities across a range of mountain areas. The situation is indicative of pervasive and consequential deficits in adaptation, and calls attention to  the need to know more about the characteristics of existing adaptation efforts, as well as prospects for increasing the quantity and quality of adaptation action in mountain areas. In response, this project develops a conceptual framework for adaptation gaps and then brings this framework to life with insights from formal systematic review efforts as well as a global-scale stock-take of major adaptation support programs relevant to mountain areas. The project sheds light on the nature and true magnitude of the adaptation gap in mountains, and provides insights into where positive interventions are possible as well as where social and biophysical limits are likely to require (or precipitate) transformative changes.

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Adaptation to Glacio-Hydrological Change in High Mountains - Role: Lead Researcher

My doctoral research : 1 ) developed an analytical framework for robust adaptation research in high mountain areas; 2 ) used formal systematic review methods to critically evaluate existing mountain-focused adaptation research and actions vis-à-vis an original typology for the challenge of climate change in high mountain areas; 3 ) conducted a multi-sited, community-level assessment of lived experiences of glacio-hydrological changes in the Nepal Himalayas (upper Manaslu region) and Peruvian Andes (Cordillera Huayhuash region); and 4 ) evaluated prospects for meeting community-identified adaptation needs with adaptation support organized through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These efforts were informed by theoretical insights from glacio-hydrological sciences, human dimensions of climate change research, and socio-ecological systems thinking, as well as 160 household interviews, 34 key informant interviews, and 4 focus groups conducted in Nepal and Peru. This project makes substantive contributions to how adaptation is studied in mountain systems as well as what we know about and can do to address growing adaptation needs in high mountain communities.

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The State of Adaptation to Climate Change in Mountain Regions - Role: Lead Researcher

This was the first study systematically assessed what is known about human adaptation to climate change in glaciated mountain regions globally. It utilized formal systematic review methods to examine the peer-reviewed English language literature and provided a clear assessment of the current state of knowledge (e.g. adaptation where, by whom, to what stressors, by what means, and with what effect). The study contributed to early work on adaptation tracking, and helped to inform research/policy agendas for addressing key knowledge gaps.

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Addressing Landscape Scale Stressors in the Greater Rocky Mountain Region - Role: Lead Researcher      

This study examined how environmental management strategies in the transboundary Rocky Mountain region are evolving in light of challenges posed by landscape-scale stressors (e.g. climate change and habitat fragmentation). It focused on a case study of the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GNLCC) and investigated how and to what extent the GNLCC, its partners, and other stakeholders are working together to overcome environmental, political, and jurisdictional challenges. I applied a novel social network analysis methodology and drew on social and biophysical sciences to make explicit the challenges and opportunities of organizational cooperation in addressing landscape-scale stressors in the Rocky Mountain region.

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The Human Dimensions of Climate Change in the Nepal Himalaya - Role: Lead Researcher 

This was one of the first case studies focused on the human dimensions of climate change in mountain areas. It examined the relationship between climate-related hydrological changes (e.g. glacial recession) and human well-being in the Mount Everest region of Eastern Nepal. I conducted two months of high altitude community-based fieldwork, identified consequential vulnerabilities and their causes, and investigated vulnerability reducing options compatible with the region’s unique socio-cultural, economic, and political context.

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