UVic’s “Pathways to Impact” fund aims to move original research that aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and move it into real-world applications for greatest impact. The fund is a partnership between UVic’s Research Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization (RPKM) unit and UVic Libraries. Funded projects will make their research openly accessible, including via UVicSpace, contributing to the democratization of knowledge and knowledge equity. The inaugural UVic fund is one of a few institutionally led knowledge-mobilization funding initiatives across Canadian research universities and among the first to directly target the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge.
UVic researchers address cultural, ecological and environmental urgency behind the Mountain Legacy Project.
UN Sustainable Development Goals: 6, 13, 14 and 15
Among the seven projects that were selected for the 2022 Pathways to Impact fund is Sentinels of change: Rising treelines and raising knowledge, led by Prof. Eric Higgs, a professor at the School of Environmental Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences) at the University of Victoria. The research project uses historical photographs from the Canadian Rocky Mountains to analyze tree line change over the last century. The results will be applied to discuss the effects of climate change on such ecosystems and possible practical implications. The funded project is part of the Mountain Legacy Project.
Besides an article in Scientific Reports, an open access journal by reputable academic publisher Nature…
Trant, A., Higgs, E., & Starzomski, B. M. (2020). A century of high elevation ecosystem change in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Art. 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66277-2
…an episode of the appraised podcast Future Ecologies was recently published in connection with the project:
“In a forgotten corner of a national archive, some very heavy boxes held a rare promise: an opportunity to look back in time at a landscape scale.”
Find a list of achievements and publications by Prof. Higgs on his website and on his ORCiD profile.
UVic Libraries congratulates Professor Higgs and his team on the successful application and their valuable research contribution to the fulfillment of the United Nations’ SDGs.
Mt. Assiniboine and Magog Lake: A. O. Wheeler, 1913 & Mary Sanseverino, 2017