Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Climate change is causing severe environmental impacts, including floods, droughts, water scarcity, and poor agricultural productivity, leading to water and food insecurity. To address these challenges, comprehensive research is necessary to understand the impacts on society and ecosystems and discover strategies for sustainable management. The proposed research program aims to investigate the physical and societal impacts of short-term and long-term climate variability in Canada, Sub-Saharan Africa, and globally, particularly in the water resources, disaster management, and agricultural planning sectors. The program will use various datasets and techniques, including climate forecasting, Earth Observation, demographic and socioeconomic data, ground-measured environmental and disaster records, and machine learning techniques. Specifically, the research will (i) evaluate short and long-term management policies of large-scale water systems, (ii) assess social vulnerability to natural disasters and its future trends with climate change scenarios, and (iii) provide crop productivity forecasts and future food security projections. The program builds upon ongoing research on the complex interplay between hydroclimate phenomena and their impacts on society, developing and validating new modeling and data tools, conducting interdisciplinary analyses of climate impacts on natural systems and their effects on population and infrastructure, and designing and testing an integrated decision support system to inform policy decisions. This program is original, innovative, and of high quality, advancing our understanding of hydroclimate phenomena and societal impacts through interdisciplinary analysis, novel modeling and data tools, and an integrated decision support system. Ultimately, this research will enhance our ability to predict, respond, and identify better sustainable management and adaptation strategies to climate change.