Piwowar investigates the effects of climate change
Posted: October 1, 2013 3:30 p.m.
Dr. Joe Piwowar, a Canada Research Chair who conducts research into the effects of climate change, near the summit of Nevado del Ruiz (alt. 5,321 m), an active volcano in the Colombian Andes. Photo courtesy of Joe Piwowar
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Dr. Joseph Piwowar is looking into how climate change is affecting the sustainable management of Prairie resources.
“The Prairies tenuously exist in a semi-arid environment and are among the regions of Canada that are most sensitive to climate changes. My research into how recent climate changes have already been impacting prairie environments – from droughts to floods, and heat waves to cold snaps – will help us to be better prepared for future changes,” says Piwowar, the Head of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and Canada Research Chair in Geomatics and Sustainability at the University of Regina.
“My appointment as a Canada Research Chair is a great honour, and a recognition from my peers of the quality of research that I do. The CRC has opened many doors for me in the form of invitations to join other collaborative research teams and to become a leader in the Canadian remote sensing community,” says Piwowar.
He was born in Hamilton, Ontario – and has lived around the world.
“My adventurous parents exposed me to many different places and cultures during my formative years. My dad was a teacher and when I was eight, he taught at a Canadian high school on an army base in Germany. We spent two years exploring the multiplicity of cultures across Europe, even into Soviet Russia. A few years later, my dad worked at a teachers’ college in Nairobi, Kenya. The three years I spent exploring the plains and game reserves of East Africa, and down into the countries that were then under apartheid rule in Southern Africa, left an indelible mark on my soul.”
His travels as a child also inspired him to continue seeing different parts of the world.
“During my doctoral research I found myself camping on a sheet of melting ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. My research team was collecting data to understand the impacts of global warming on the northern environment. More recently, as part of another research team studying the ecological and social responses to climate extremes in the Americas, I hiked up to the base of Mt. Aconcagua in the Argentinian Andes – the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas.”
He earned his PhD in at the University of Waterloo, and joined the University of Regina in 2002.
“As a mid-sized institution we don't have the luxury of having multiple researchers in the same lab focusing on the same problem. Many researchers here – myself included – are the sole experts in their fields. This forces us to step outside our traditional discipline boundaries and seek collaborations with our colleagues in other faculties. Ultimately, when you have several researchers looking at the same problem from different perspectives, great things can happen. In the end, our research results are stronger,” he explains.
The other Canada Research Chairs at the University of Regina are Christine Chan, Shadia Drury, Gordon Huang, Peter Leavitt, Greg Marchildon, Charity Marsh, Christopher Somers, Chris Yost and Sandra Zilles.