As the intensities of urbanization and climate change increase across the Toronto region, there are many benefits pointing to a need for increased investments in our regions urban forests. Urban forests provide co-benefits, services that benefit both humans and the environment, through heat mitigation and mitigation of the “urban heat island”, removing air pollution, sequestering […]

Minimizing energy consumption is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With that in mind, the industry partner wants to transition to a quantitative monitoring approach to simultaneously manage product quality and energy consumption. The intern will work to understand the relationship between raw material characteristics, process parameters, product quality indices, and energy consumption. They will […]

The Community Energy Explorer (CEE) is a unique, interactive and visually compelling web-resource to build capacity of citizens, decision-makers, and local government staff on community energy and related land use issues. The current phase lays out a program to roll-out, host, and scale-up use of an enhanced CEE platform to better support community transitions and […]

Pacific salmon spend most of their life in the open ocean, where we know little about the factors influencing their health and abundance. Last year, we participated in the first expedition to explore the winter habitat of salmon the Gulf of Alaska. We collect samples to inform ongoing research projects focusing on salmon health and […]

Ontario’s Greenbelt is composed of nearly 2 million acres of protected land including natural areas that provide ecosystem services to millions of people. While these areas face reduced pressure from land use conversion, they still face a pressures typical of natural systems in peri-urban landscapes including loss of biodiversity, invasive species, impacts from infrastructure projects […]

Cannabis sativa is a plant grown used as industrial hemp, for CBD oil, and both medicinal and recreational cannabis (marijuana). Since production has historically been prohibited in Canada and the USA, little is known about insect pests of cannabis, including a species of aphid, the cannabis aphid (Phorodon cannabis). In order to develop effective management […]

Introduced Phragmites australis (common reed) is one of the most invasive plants in North America. Existing management is costly, can negatively affect other species, and is often only effective for small infestations. Classical biological control (i.e., introducing herbivores from the weed’s native range) is a promising tool for P. australis management that can contribute to […]

Wax emulsions are widely used in conjunction with wood adhesives to improve overall dimensional stability of the resulting wood products. In this study, we will investigate kraft lignin and waste tallow as sustainable, biobased partial replacements for fossil fuel derived wax. These renewable, hydrophobic materials can be formulated into a wax emulsion using conventional emulsification […]

Research the existing stock of Environmental Product Declarations and underlying Product Category Rules in selected material categories including wood, steel, and glass. Evaluate the accuracy and comparability of the population, identify top sources of embodied carbon impact variation in the supply chain, and provide estimates of the sensitivity of the embodied carbon impact of those […]

Canada is the fourth largest barley producer and the second largest malt exporter in the world, representing billions of dollars in domestic and international sales. Typically, barley is utilized as animal fodder, as a nutritional supplement for healthy foods and is also used in the production of alcoholic beverages and distilled spirits. The ethanol produced […]

It is critical for farmers to have the information necessary so that they can make decisions on the best practices to undertake when growing a new crop. Pulse production is growing in demand and is an established market in Canada. In addition, plant based protein products are growing in popularity. We are working on developing […]

Flax seed is of interest as a health food product with high omega-3 fatty acid, protein and fiber content. The seeds naturally contain compound that are anti-nutritive and have a bitter flavor. We have developed a process to safely and cheaply remove these compounds from whole flax seed. We intend to investigate the nutritive qualities, […]