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  • OPEN ACCESS
    Correction: Integrating wood fuels into agriculture and food security agendas and research in sub-Saharan Africa
    FACETS • Vol. 3 • No. 1 • pp. 22
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Hidden participants and unheard voices? A systematic review of gender, age, and other influences on local and traditional knowledge research in the North
    FACETS • Vol. 3 • No. 1 • pp. 830 - 848
    Local, lay, and traditional ecological knowledge (LTK) is widely discussed in academic studies of climatic and environmental change. Here, we report on a systematic literature review that examines the role of such factors as gender, age, and scholarly networks in shaping LTK research. We focused on research in the circumpolar North, where LTK research has been ongoing for at least four decades. We explored how recruitment approaches and research methods can circumscribe local expertise and found that much of the literature fails to adequately report sampling and participant demographics. There is an apparent bias towards male knowledge-holders, usually hunters and Elders, over women and youth. Studies were largely led by male authors, and male authors outnumbered female authors 2:1. We also identified two potential “invisible colleges” in the literature—communities of practice linked by one or a few authors. We discuss our findings through the lens of “intersectionality”, which captures how power differences at play within communities, whether around age or gender or some other social categorization, contribute to the creation of multiple kinds of knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of how we can improve this area of research by challenging assumptions and collaborating with a wider range of individuals.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Correction: Scientists on Twitter: Preaching to the choir or singing from the rooftops?
    FACETS • Vol. 3 • No. 1 • pp. 799
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Canadians’ perspectives on how much space nature needs
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 91 - 104
    Determining how much to set aside in a system of protected areas has been widely discussed. In the past, targets that have been set internationally and domestically are best described as politically driven. In recent years, there has been a call to shift towards evidence-based targets for conservation. One element that has been largely missing from this dialogue is public perception of how much to protect. We conducted an online, regionally balanced survey of just over 2000 Canadians to ask about their values for protected areas, including how much they thought was currently and should be protected. Overall, Canadians overwhelmingly agree that protected areas are necessary and think that approximately 50% of land and sea should be protected in Canada and globally. Nation-wide support for a significant increase in the amount of land/sea protected is a new finding in Canada, although consistent with applications of the same survey in other countries. As the timeline for achieving the current 2020 protected area targets approaches, countries are beginning to discuss what targets to set for the next decade. Our findings demonstrate strong public support for significantly scaling up Canada’s conservation targets, consistent with ecological evidence.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Gender and language use in scientific grant writing
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 442 - 458
    Women in science, technology, engineering, and math are not equally represented across tenure-track career stages, and this extends to grant funding, where women applicants often have lower success rates compared with men. While gender bias in reviewers has been documented, it is currently unknown whether written language in grant applications varies predictably with gender to elicit bias against women. Here we analyse the text of ∼2000 public research summaries from the 2016 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) individual Discovery Grant (DG) program. We explore the relationship between language variables, inferred gender and career stage, and funding levels. We also analyse aggregated data from the 2012–2018 NSERC DG competitions to determine whether gender impacted the probability of receiving a grant for early-career researchers. We document a marginally significant gender difference in funding levels for successful grants, with women receiving $1756 less than men, and a large and significant difference in rejection rates among early-career applicants (women: 40.4% rejection; men: 33.0% rejection rate). Language variables had little ability to predict gender or funding level using predictive modelling. Our results indicate that NSERC funding levels and success rates differ between men and women, but we find no evidence that gendered language use affected funding outcomes.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Highlighting the potential of peer-led workshops in training early-career researchers for conducting research with Indigenous communities
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 275 - 292
    For decades, Indigenous voices have called for more collaborative and inclusive research practices. Interest in community-collaborative research is consequently growing among university-based researchers in Canada. However, many researchers receive little formal training on how to collaboratively conduct research with Indigenous communities. This is particularly problematic for early-career researchers (ECRs) whose fieldwork often involves interacting with communities. To address this lack of training, two peer-led workshops for Canadian ECRs were organized in 2016 and 2017 with the following objectives: (i) to cultivate awareness about Indigenous cultures, histories, and languages; (ii) to promote sharing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing; and (iii) to foster approaches and explore tools for conducting community-collaborative research. Here we present these peer-led Intercultural Indigenous Workshops and discuss workshop outcomes according to five themes: scope and interdisciplinarity, Indigenous representation, workshop environment, skillful moderation, and workshop outcomes. Although workshops cannot replace the invaluable experience gained through working directly with Indigenous communities, we show that peer-led workshops can be an effective way for ECRs to develop key skills for conducting meaningful collaborative research. Peer-led workshops are therefore an important but insufficient step toward more inclusive research paradigms in Canada.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Lost in translation? Insights into caribou habitat selection from forest inventory data
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 531 - 550
    The gap between research and its implementation is an impediment to conservation of the environment. Translating science into actionable management and policy requires effective communication and collaboration among scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers. Ecologists routinely rely on spatial data to describe wildlife distributions; however, habitat definitions vary by species, and data sources often differ from those used by land managers. Finding commonalities in the language and data used to plan for industrial activities and wildlife conservation may help address the research-implementation gap for threatened species like woodland caribou. We built resource selection functions for caribou using Alberta Vegetation Index (AVI) habitat data, which is employed by the Alberta forest industry for landbase planning. Our goal was to bridge the research-implementation gap by providing the forest industry with tools to facilitate planning for caribou conservation within their jurisdiction. In contrast to previous studies that highlighted shortcomings in AVI data for predicting wildlife habitat use, we found that resource selection function models that combined AVI data with complementary covariates validated well to predict caribou habitat use. We suggest that by using a data source familiar to land managers, ecologists can facilitate the bridging of the research-implementation gap without compromising the quality of ecological modeling.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    “We monitor by living here”: community-driven actualization of a social-ecological monitoring program based in the knowledge of Indigenous harvesters
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 293 - 314
    Researchers and government agencies are increasingly embracing Indigenous knowledge to inform ecological monitoring. However, there are few detailed accounts of designing monitoring methods based in Indigenous knowledge to meet Indigenous objectives. This research details the design of a program initiated by the Gitga’at First Nation to document the knowledge and observations of their harvesters as a contemporary monitoring initiative. We, Gitga’at and academic researchers, first conducted informal interviews with knowledge holders to gauge interest and to establish community objectives. We then convened community meetings and workshops to design methods to document harvesters’ knowledge and observations. We tested and revised these methods (a post-harvest season interview guide, and a logbook to be completed by harvesters) over the course of two harvest seasons. Semi-structured interviews were more successful than the logbooks in meeting multiple community monitoring objectives. However, we were encouraged by younger participants’ suggestions to develop a digital app based on the logbook to encourage future participation. Our work can serve as a guide to other Indigenous peoples and collaborators who wish to leverage the knowledge of their land and (or) sea users, and the methods we develop are available to adapt to other cultural, social-ecological, and political contexts.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Knowledge in the dark: scientific challenges and ways forward
    FACETS • Vol. 4 • No. 1 • pp. 423 - 441
    A key dimension of our current era is Big Data, the rapid rise in produced data and information; a key frustration is that we are nonetheless living in an age of ignorance, as the real knowledge and understanding of people does not seem to be substantially increasing. This development has critical consequences, for example it limits the ability to find and apply effective solutions to pressing environmental and socioeconomic challenges. Here, we propose the concept of “knowledge in the dark”—or short: dark knowledge—and outline how it can help clarify key reasons for this development: (i) production of biased, erroneous, or fabricated data and information; (ii) inaccessibility and (iii) incomprehensibility of data and information; and (iv) loss of previous knowledge. Even in the academic realm, where financial interests are less pronounced than in the private sector, several factors lead to dark knowledge, that is they inhibit a more substantial increase in knowledge and understanding. We highlight four of these factors—loss of academic freedom, research biases, lack of reproducibility, and the Scientific tower of Babel—and offer ways to tackle them, for example establishing an international court of arbitration for research and developing advanced tools for research synthesis.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Envisioning the scientific paper of the future
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 1 - 16
    Consider for a moment the rate of advancement in the scientific understanding of DNA. It is formidable; from Fredrich Miescher’s nuclein extraction in the 1860s to Rosalind Franklin’s double helix X-ray in the 1950s to revolutionary next-generation sequencing in the late 2000s. Now consider the scientific paper, the medium used to describe and publish these advances. How is the scientific paper advancing to meet the needs of those who generate and use scientific information? We review four essential qualities for the scientific paper of the future: (i) a robust source of trustworthy information that remains peer reviewed and is (ii) communicated to diverse users in diverse ways, (iii) open access, and (iv) has a measurable impact beyond Impact Factor. Since its inception, scientific literature has proliferated. We discuss the continuation and expansion of practices already in place including: freely accessible data and analytical code, living research and reviews, changes to peer review to improve representation of under-represented groups, plain language summaries, preprint servers, evidence-informed decision-making, and altmetrics.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    A graduate student perspective on overcoming barriers to interacting with open-source software
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 289 - 303
    Computational methods, coding, and software are important tools for conducting research. In both academic and industry data analytics, open-source software (OSS) has gained massive popularity. Collaborative source code allows students to interact with researchers, code developers, and users from a variety of disciplines. Based on the authors’ experiences as graduate students and coding instructors, this paper provides a unique overview of the obstacles that graduate students face in obtaining the knowledge and skills required to complete their research and in transitioning from an OSS user to a contributor: psychological, practical, and cultural barriers and challenges specific to graduate students including cognitive load in graduate school, the importance of a knowledgeable mentor, seeking help from both the online and local communities, and the ongoing campaign to recognize software as research output in career and degree progression. Specific and practical steps are recommended to provide a foundation for graduate students, supervisors, administrators, and members of the OSS community to help overcome these obstacles. In conclusion, the objective of these recommendations is to describe a possible framework that individuals from across the scientific community can adapt to their needs and facilitate a sustainable feedback loop between graduate students and OSS.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Our practice of outreach during the Ice Monitoring project in Nunavik: an early-career researcher perspective
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 123 - 137
    Inuit Nunangat, including Nunavik, is seeing an ever-increasing number of research projects. While mainstream approaches to research are colonial in nature and have historically contributed to the oppression of Indigenous peoples, a new paradigm is now emerging from Indigenous recommendations. Researchers are encouraged to collaborate with Inuit or Northern communities, organizations, and governments and to develop communication strategies to keep local populations informed. This paper focuses on outreach activities organized on several occasions throughout the Ice Monitoring project, in which we participated as PhD students. We share details on this periodic outreach program, which included a Facebook page, hosting an information table at the Co-op store, activities with high school classes, and participation in Raglan Mine’s Environmental Forum. We also discuss lessons learned and the transformation of our practice.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Enacting workplace culture change for excellence in research: a gender lens
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 228 - 233
    Science and engineering research excellence can be maximized if the selection of researchers is made from 100% of the pool of human talent. This requires policies and approaches that encourage broad sections of society, including women and other underrepresented groups, to participate in research. Institutional policies, interpersonal interactions, and individuals’ attitudes are drivers of workplace culture. Here, some new evidence-based and systematic approaches with a focus on culture are proposed to foster women’s inclusion and success in science and engineering.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Synthesizing and communicating climate change impacts to inform coastal adaptation planning
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 704 - 737
    Planning for adaptation to climate change requires regionally relevant information on rising air and ocean temperatures, sea levels, increasingly frequent and intense storms, and other climate-related impacts. However, in many regions there are limited focused syntheses of the climate impacts, risks, and potential adaptation strategies for coastal marine areas and sectors. We report on a regional assessment of climate change impacts and recommendations for adaptation strategies in the NE Pacific Coast (British Columbia, Canada), conducted in collaboration with a regional planning and plan implementation partnership (Marine Plan Partnership for the North Pacific Coast), aimed at bridging the gaps between climate science and regional adaptation planning. We incorporated both social and ecological aspects of climate change impacts and adaptations, and the feedback mechanisms which may result in both increased risks and opportunities for the following areas of interest: “Ecosystems”, “Fisheries and Aquaculture”, “Communities”, and “Marine Infrastructure”. As next steps within the region, we propose proactive planning measures including communication of the key impacts and projections and cross-sectoral assessments of climate vulnerability and risk to direct decision-making.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Tracking insect outbreaks: a case study of community-assisted moth monitoring using sex pheromone traps
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 91 - 104
    Insect outbreaks can cover vast geographic areas making it onerous to cost-effectively monitor populations to address management or ecological questions. Community science (or citizen science), which entails engaging the public to assist with data collection, provides a possible solution to this challenge for the spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens), a major defoliating pest in North America. Here, we lay out the Budworm Tracker Program, a contributory community science program developed to help monitor spruce budworm moths throughout eastern Canada. The program outsources free pheromone trap kits to volunteers who periodically check and collect moths from their traps throughout the budworm flight period, then return them in a prepaid envelope to the organizers. Over three years, the program engaged an average of 216–375 volunteers and yielded a data return rate of 68%–89%, for a total of 16 311–54 525 moths per year. Volunteer retention among years was 71%–89%. Data from this program offer compelling evidence for the range of long-distance moth dispersal. Although our program was designed for spruce budworm, this template could easily be adapted for forestry, urban forestry, and agricultural systems to monitor any of the numerous organisms for which there is an established trapping method.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Threshold concepts and sustainability: features of a contested paradigm
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 182 - 199
    Threshold concepts describe the core concepts that people must master if they are to effectively think from within a new discipline or paradigm. Here, I discuss threshold concepts relevant to the science and practice of sustainability, unpacking the persistent challenges and critiques that sustainability has faced over the decades. Sustainability is immensely popular, but also endlessly critiqued as being naïve, vague, and easy to co-opt. I argue that these challenges can be traced to sustainability’s status as a robust, alternative world view to the industrial, neoliberal paradigm. The threshold concepts discussed below are troublesome, and new learners face significant challenges when trying to learn them and move into the paradigm. Here, I review five threshold concepts that are widely discussed as important to sustainability: complexity, collaborative institutions, multiple ways of knowing, no panaceas, and adaptability. This list is not intended as comprehensive but exemplary of sustainability as a pluralistic paradigm. Recognizing the special status of these and other threshold concepts within sustainability, and the linkages and dependencies among them, is an important advance for sustainability education and practice. I also offer some suggestions on classroom activities that have proved effective in helping people through the process of learning these concepts.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Indigenous knowledge and federal environmental assessments in Canada: applying past lessons to the 2019 impact assessment act
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 67 - 90
    Policy-makers ideally pursue well-informed, socially just means to make environmental decisions. Indigenous peoples have used Indigenous knowledge (IK) to inform decisions about environmental management for millennia. In the last 50 years, many western societies have used environmental assessment (EA) processes to deliberate on industrial proposals, informed by scientific information. Recently EA processes have attempted to incorporate IK in some countries and regions, but practitioners and scholars have criticized the ability of EA to meaningfully engage IK. Here we consider these tensions in Canada, a country with economic focus on resource extraction and unresolved government-to-government relationships with Indigenous Nations. In 2019, the Canadian government passed the Impact Assessment Act, reinvigorating dialogue on the relationship between IK and EA. Addressing this opportunity, we examined obstacles between IK and EA via a systematic literature review, and qualitative analyses of publications and the Act itself. Our results and synthesis identify obstacles preventing the Act from meaningfully engaging IK, some of which are surmountable (e.g., failures to engage best practices, financial limitations), whereas others are substantial (e.g., knowledge incompatibilities, effects of colonization). Finally, we offer recommendations for practitioners and scholars towards ameliorating relationships between IK and EA towards improved decision-making and recognition of Indigenous rights.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Diverse perspectives on interdisciplinarity from Members of the College of the Royal Society of Canada
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 138 - 165
    Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly “interdisciplinarity,” which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity, represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in a cohesive manner. As a team of 57 members from the Canadian College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (the College) who self-identify as being engaged or interested in interdisciplinarity, we provide diverse intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives. The goal of this paper is to share our collective wisdom on this topic with the broader community and to stimulate discourse and debate on the merits and challenges associated with interdisciplinarity. Perhaps the clearest message emerging from this exercise is that working across established boundaries of scholarly communities is rewarding, necessary, and is more likely to result in impact. However, there are barriers that limit the ease with which this can occur (e.g., lack of institutional structures and funding to facilitate cross-disciplinary exploration). Occasionally, there can be significant risk associated with doing interdisciplinary work (e.g., lack of adequate measurement or recognition of work by disciplinary peers). Solving many of the world’s complex and pressing problems (e.g., climate change, sustainable agriculture, the burden of chronic disease, and aging populations) demands thinking and working across long-standing, but in some ways restrictive, academic boundaries. Academic institutions and key support structures, especially funding bodies, will play an important role in helping to realize what is readily apparent to all who contributed to this paper—that interdisciplinarity is essential for solving complex problems; it is the new norm. Failure to empower and encourage those doing this research will serve as a great impediment to training, knowledge, and addressing societal issues.
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Bat bites and rabies: the Canadian scene
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 367 - 380
    Bats are susceptible to rabies. Although bats may appear to be asymptomatic carriers of rabies for a few days, eventually they fall ill to the viral infection and die. Two of at least four bat-specific variants of rabies virus in Canada have killed humans. Rabies is usually transmitted by biting, but bats are small mammals so their bites may go unnoticed. People exposed to rabid animals should receive postexposure prophylaxis (PEP). With 60 known human deaths from 1950 to 2009, rabies is rare in Canada and the United States of America compared with India where it kills over 100 people annually. In Asia and Africa, most human rabies is acquired from dog bites. In Brazil, dog and bat bites together account for >80% of human rabies. In Canada, rabies is a disease primarily confined to wildlife (foxes, racoons, skunks, and bats). The public image of bats is negatively affected by their association with diseases. Too often bats are victimized by allegations of their role in deadly diseases such as rabies, Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In general, bats are not dangerous, but humans should seek treatment if they are bitten by one. (Graphical abstract shows a 4-g elegant myotis biting MBF’s finger—photo by Sherri and Brock Fenton.)
  • OPEN ACCESS
    Sowing a way towards revitalizing Indigenous agriculture: creating meaning from a forum discussion in Saskatchewan, Canada
    FACETS • Vol. 5 • No. 1 • pp. 619 - 641
    Agriculture is practiced on 3–4 million acres of First Nations reserve lands in the Saskatchewan Prairies—predominantly by non-Indigenous farmers. A confluence of factors including an increase in agricultural land holdings on reserve and greater autonomy in land management have renewed conversations on how First Nations can realize the full economic benefits and exert greater control over agricultural activities that affect the reserve land base. We hosted a Forum on Indigenous Agriculture to share current knowledge on the contemporary status of Indigenous agriculture and to co-formulate research, capacity building, and policy priorities. First Nations’ roles in agriculture are diverse and were categorized in three broad contexts: as farmers, relying on traditional Indigenous or western practice, or a synergy of both; as landlords negotiating lease agreements; and as agribusiness entrepreneurs. Five themes emerged from the forum: centring Indigenous knowledge and traditional relationships to the land, capacity building, building respectful partnerships and relationships, financing farming and equitable economies, and translating research to policy and legislation. The forum provided foundational data to inform research and capacity building to meet community-defined goals in agriculture on reserve lands and by First Nations people.