The Climate Consortium for Research Action and Integration (CC-RAI) is developing two working groups, with York University faculty expertise in the areas of Climate Change Literacy and Strengthening Climate Change Interdisciplinary Collaborations. The formation of these two working groups follows from the recommendations of the CC-RAI report Climate is No Small Talk: Climate Change Research at York and Beyond from the meeting of climate-change practitioners on December 6, 2010. The Office of the Vice-President of Research and Innovation is providing $7500.00 in funding for each of these two initiatives for the period April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012.

A report of working group initiatives will be submitted to the VPRI and Management Committee of CC-RAI by March 31, 2012 and will be used to support the CC-RAI mandate of fostering enhanced climate change related research at York University.

Faculty or graduate students interested in participating in the working groups should contact, the Co-Chair of the CC-RAI Research Committee, Richard Bello, bello@yorku.ca.

For additional details please refer to the link.

On March 1st, 2011 from 8:30am-3:00pm in the Harry Crowe Room (109 Atkinson) York University and Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) will be hosting the York University Climate Change and Policy Research Day.

Join faculty, researchers and policy makers from the City of Toronto, the Regions of York, Durham, and Peel, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, and the Weather Water Gateway project for a panel discussion on climate change work being done at the regional and municipal level, as well as existing research gaps and opportunities for collaboration.

Karen Kraft Sloan, former Canadian Ambassador for the Environment and adjunct faculty at the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) will chair a series of panel discussions on current climate change research  gaps and opportunities for collaboration with project partners with policy partners, faculty and graduate students.

This event will also allow graduate students to hear from policymakers about potential career paths and to speak to them directly about the Climate Change summer internships being offered by York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit.

The agenda is now available online. Registration is easy, but seating is limited. Breakfast and lunch will be served – so register early.

Watch this spot for details on upcoming internship details next week!

This event is generously supported by funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

WNV has been a seasonal epidemic in Toronto since 2001. Nine of the twelve species of mosquito that carry WNV – known as vectors – live in the Toronto region. Since West Nile virus was first discovered in Southern Ontario, wetlands and storm water management ponds have been suspected of providing breeding grounds for WNV-carrying mosquitoes. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (one of the founding partners of CC-RAI) being the largest land owner in the Toronto region started their monitoring activities in response to these concerns.

From 2005-2009, Krishnaraj and her team have carried out the monitoring of selected wetlands and stormwater management ponds that are located on TRCA properties to determine the types of mosquitoes that were breeding, their relative abundance, and the risk of human WNV exposure originating from one of these sites. This work has been conducted as part of TRCA’s broader Regional Watershed Monitoring Program.

What did the TRCA research reveal? Wetlands generally have higher numbers of mosquito larvae than stormwater ponds but fewer WNV vector species. The overall risk of WNV exposure from wetlands and stormwater ponds is relatively low and, large numbers of mosquitoes (larvae) does not necessarily mean a higher risk of contracting WNV.

In all years except for 2006, wetlands had fewer species of WNV carrying mosquitoes than non-vector mosquito species. Storm water management ponds had very high percentages of vector mosquitoes, but the absolute number was generally not high enough to be a risk to the community. On average, there were only one or two high risk sites per year out of all the wetlands and storm water management ponds monitored.

On November 22nd Thilaka Krishnaraj, an entomologist at the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) gave a presentation on the outcomes of West Nile Virus (WNV) larval monitoring and surveillance activities in the Toronto region to a group of researchers and students from the Laboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems (LAMPS) at the LAMPS Weekly Interdisciplinary Workshop.

Dr. Huaiping Zhu, an associate professor and project leader at LAMPS welcomed the opportunity to share expertise and understanding on the relationship between ecology and epidemiology.

Both TRCA and LAMPS realize the importance of monitoring, modeling and the additional research that is needed in understanding the ways in which ecosystems and consequently, epidemiology may well be impacted by a changing climate.