The Solutions Scholars program sponsors UBC Master’s and PhD students to apply their scholarly research to climate change mitigation, adaptation, and/or education. Fourteen students have been selected as scholars for the 2024 - 2025 cohort, focusing on projects submitted by interdisciplinary teams of researchers.
See the four projects students will be working on this year.
Enhancing Heatwave Forecasting and Public Uptake: A Collaborative Project with ECCC
Project Mentors: Dr. Rachel White (EOAS), Dr. Farrukh A. Chishtie (Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy), Dr. Daniel Michelson, Dr. David Hudak (Environment and Climate Change Canada - ECCC)
Description: The adverse impacts of extreme heat events, intensified by climate change, pose significant risks to human health, ecosystems, and socio-economic structures globally. In Canada, these impacts manifest through intensified urban heat island effects in cities, agricultural losses in the Prairie Provinces, accelerated permafrost melting in northern regions, and increased strain on energy grids. This project aims to collaboratively engage with Environment Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to enhance heatwave forecasting capabilities and public uptake of heatwave warnings through the application of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) techniques.
Carbon Offsets: Climate Action or Sustainability Illusion?
Project Mentors: Hisham Zerriffi (Forestry), Kathryn Harrison (Political Science), Werner Antweiler (Sauder School of Business), Gregory Paradis (Forestry)
Description: This project will examine the current state of offset programs and the potential future use of offsets in Canada (with a particular focus on British Columbia, though potentially drawing on offsets purchased from abroad). The students will conduct a literature review to support the development of an NSERC Alliance grant to better account for and model forest carbon in Canada and the role that forests can play in offsetting emissions under a changing climate. They will also use the literature review to develop a series of short opinion pieces on the benefits and risks of Canada relying on carbon offsets to meet climate mitigation targets. These opinion pieces will cover key factors such as: the challenges of carbon accounting; moral hazard in carbon offsets; monitoring and verification of carbon offsets. The target would be a series in either Policy Options or The Conversation.
Using Large Language Models to 'chat' with the IPCC reports
Project Mentors: Milind Kandlikar (IRES, SPPGA), Sathish Gopalakrishnan (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science), Navin Ramankutty (IRES, SPPGA)
Description: Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Chat-GPT (Open AI), Gemini (Google) have shown remarkable language capabilities across diverse tasks such as open-ended question-answers and content summarization. This project seeks to apply the tools of LLM to climate science and solutions. Our goal is to use LLM technology to query the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports for synthesis information. The methods and tools we develop will enable researchers and lay individuals to ask questions about climate science and solutions, and receive credible and insightful responses. Credible communication of complex information on climate science and solutions is a critical step in improving climate policy outcomes. Solution Scholars on this project will become a leader in an emerging field (the use of AIs as synthesis and communication tools) while working to solve a global problem of great significance.
Advancing Climate Mitigation and Adaptation through Agroecological Transitions
Project Mentors: Hannah Wittman (IRES/LFS); Sean Smukler (APBI/UBC Farm); Khanh Dao Duc (Math/Computer Science)
Description: A team of researchers based at the UBC Farm is developing tools to enable the effective monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of climate mitigation and other co-benefits of regenerative, climate-resilient and organic vegetable management practices including crop rotations, crop diversification, and organic nutrient management. Our team members have developed two tools, the BMP Multicriteria Framework and LiteFarm, to help farmers and the decision-makers that support them (e.g. extension specialists, government policy makers) evaluate the potential trade-offs of beneficial management practices that are designed for climate benefits with other co-benefits such as impact on farm profitability.
Our project will develop the first emission factors (EFs) based on the net greenhouse gas balance for five potential regenerative practices for organic vegetables. This project is a specific aspect of a larger initiative to develop data visualizations, carbon footprinting/EFs, and nutrient management prescriptions using data that farmers provide through the LiteFarm tool, which is an open-source and free tool supporting farm management and sustainability assessment developed at the UBC Centre for Sustainable Food Systems from 2018-2024. Current we have over 5000 users providing data from in 150 countries. We are seeking to test a data pipeline whereby LiteFarm can capture and predict the carbon sequestration potential of different farm management practices, which can be verified and reported similar to the structure of organic agriculture certification.
Meet the 2024 - 2025 Solutions Scholars
