The Office of Graduate Programs is pleased to announce that Jerrica Mann will be defending their thesis entitled “Climate Change-Conscious Systematic Conservation Planning: A case study in the Peace River Break, British Columbia” as a candidate for the degree Master of Science in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies.  We encourage you to view the defence online. The details on the defence and how to join are included below.

DATE:  July 6, 2020

TIME:  9:00 AM

LINK TO JOIN: Join Zoom Meeting

https://unbc.zoom.us/j/98178737081?pwd=Y0U3S2h6SHJSUTM5M2xiQ1pJTTBoQT09

Meeting ID: 981 7873 7081

Password: 127547

To ensure the defence proceeds with no interruptions, please mute your audio and video on entry and do not share your screen inadvertently. The meeting will be locked to entry 5 minutes after it begins, ensure you are on time.

ABSTRACT: The synergistic effects of anthropogenic disturbance, habitat fragmentation and climate change pose a significant threat to biodiversity that is challenging to predict. Anthropogenically driven climate change has already begun to impact critical climate regions and is now recognized to be one of the most serious threats to biodiversity and the conservation thereof. Despite this, few conservation planning initiatives have sought to sharpen the focus of the systematic conservation planning (SCP) framework to explicitly include climate change. To promote the evolution of the SCP framework into a climate change-conscious (CCC) approach to conservation planning, I developed and applied a methodology for incorporating climate-change resiliency into the SCP framework. This CCC-SCP methodology can be used to guide future conservation planning initiatives, helping conservation planners recognize and respond to opportunities for action, conserve our planet’s biodiversity and mitigate the effects of climate change.