Congratulations to Dr. Brian Hunt, who has won a Wall Research Awards – Individual Faculty Award, and also to graduate students Sadie Lye (MSc, OCF) and Grace Melchers (PhD, OCF), who have won awards from the inaugural Peter Wall Legacy Awards program.
These awards are one of the largest internal award programs at any university in North America. The suite of awards will support the research activities of tenure-track faculty members at all stages of their career, and those of Master’s and doctoral students.
Dr Hunt’s project is The Sustainable Urban Ocean Project. Urban development has severely impacted the ecological systems that have supported Indigenous communities for millennia, and settler communities more recently. While pollution has been a focus to understand and address these impacts, little attention has been paid to the inorganic and organic nutrient additions from sewage and waste water production, stormwater outflow, and urbanized watersheds. These change the very nature of the land—ocean connection that make the coastal ocean so productive and biodiverse. This project will address this knowledge gap, evaluating ecosystem response to urbanization, with the goal to support healthy ecosystem function and guide sustainable development and restoration efforts.
Sadie Lye’s research focuses on the impact of the urban environment on the coastal ocean. In particular, she is investigating the role of stormwater in transporting organic matter and nutrients from Metro Vancouver to Burrard Inlet. In addition, she is assessing the relative contribution of organic matter from anthropogenic and natural sources to particulate organic matter, which forms the base of the marine food web. She hopes that this research contributes to informing stormwater management and ensuring healthy coastal environment across British Columbia, Canada.
Grace Melchers’ research focuses on using a cutting-edge molecular technique called environmental DNA, or eDNA, to study the impact of development on nearshore fish communities. This project has been developed and implemented in partnership with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, centred within their ancestral waters of səl̓ilw̓ət, also known as Burrard Inlet. She is hoping to better understand the role that urbanization and development plays in shaping the movements, habitat preferences, and diversity of nearshore fish communities through the use of these non-invasive and novel eDNA methodologies to better inform the management and restoration of nearshore urban areas.
Tags: Awards, Brian Hunt, British Columbia, Burrard Inlet, coastal environment, eDNA, Faculty, honours, IOF students, Pelagic Ecosystems Lab, Tsleil-Waututh Nation, urban environment, wastewater, watersheds