Water and wastewater utilities typically represent the single largest municipal consumer of electricity. Previous studies have shown the potential to significantly reduce this use through infrastructure and operational improvements, particularly for water distribution. The proposed research seeks to validate and expand the application of energy metrics, developed by the applicant, that describe how energy is […]

The purpose of the project is to generate soybean plants able to tolerate whole plant submergence and waterlogging (soil submergence). This will be achieved by inducing Pgb, a gene normally present in soybean and known to confer tolerance to excessive humidity, through genetic manipulations. Correlative studies between Pgb expression and performance under excessive water conditions […]

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has up to 20% CO2 and 90% NOx fewer emissions than diesel; making it a cleaner alternative fuel for mobile applications. LNG has high volumetric energy density and is cost effective ($0.5 cheaper than diesel gallon equivalent). However, LNG is stored at low temperatures (-162ºC) and releases boil-off gas that contributes […]

This project will investigate the challenging possibility of operating anaerobic digesters at 20 ºC without the supply of any external heat source by combining anaerobic digestion with sludge ozonation. The hypothesis is that such combination will enable the operation of anaerobic digesters at 20 °C, and achieve higher biosolids reduction, more biogas production, and increased […]

“Functional foods and cosmetics contain physiologically active compounds. However, many active ingredients are susceptible to degradation and/or are not efficiently absorbed by the body. It is increasingly recognized that the composition and physical structures of the products, and interactions between ingredients in the matrix can impact the stability and availability of active ingredients. Encapsulation is […]

In 1995, proportions of several stocks of Fraser River sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) began to enter the Fraser River system early to spawn creating uncertainty in mortality and spawning abundance estimates. This has created large problems for fisheries management in their attempt to protect less abundant stocks. To address this issue, Fisheries and Oceans Canada […]

Roche Lake is the Roche Lake is the largest lake among 12 highly productive water bodies in the Thomson-Nicola region of BC’s southern Interior Plateau. It has experienced algal blooms over the past four years indicating a change in nutrient loadings to the lake. Roche Lake suffered a winterkill of more than 50% of fish […]

The project involves the identification of a Canadian community to be compared with Barcelona (Spain), Bristol (UK) and other two international communities, all experienced cities on sustainability with more than 100 partners including businesses, NGOs, academia and the public sector. The Canadian community must comply with certain criteria to make findings comparable with the international […]

Community integrated energy and food systems bring production and management to the local scale in order to increase autonomy and resiliency. These are particularly expedient in the face of global climate change, more frequent and severe extreme weather, geopolitical instability and peak oil. Bioenergy systems offer enormous potential for such applications because they stand at […]

Large northward-flowing boreal rivers are an important hydroelectric resource, but effects of river regulation on downstream geomorphology and aquatic ecosystems are difficult to predict. Peace River, BC presents an ideal case study of river response to regulation, with continuous monitoring since dam construction in 1967. However, current understanding of system changes is based mainly on […]

Several fish species produce species-specific sounds that can be identified in the wild using Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) (i.e. dataloggers configured with underwater microphones). Our project will use existing and new PAM recordings to monitor the distribution of several fish species in the western Canadian Arctic, with particular focus on a keystone Arctic species, the […]

The scope of this project is to use acoustic data from long-baseline arrays of hydrophones to detect, locate, and track marine mammals based on their vocalization. Specifically, the project aims to assess methods and develop automated tracking algorithms that provide accurate results for individual signals, and a maximum of flexibility regarding the channel, array, and […]