Webinar: A geographer’s take on risks, data, and watersheds

Thursday May 19 at 1pm ET

François-Nicolas Robinne, a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service, shares his expertise utilizing wildfire and freshwater data to identify watershed risks on May 19th.

Webinar description: ​Water security risks are at an all-time high, as various aspects of global change combine to wreak havoc on communities and ecosystems around the world. For the past 10 years, wildfires have emerged as an additional threat to sustainable water supplies; Canada, a fire-prone country well-known for its mighty rivers, is now taking a stronger stance to address this issue. Building risk knowledge conducive to sound policies is not an easy task, especially for emerging risks for which data, scope of study, and a well-defined terminology might be lacking. Focusing on wildfire-watershed risks, Robinne will review the existing risk terminology and suggest appropriate uses so that studies on this topic are properly framed. He will also discuss the importance of data, especially data openness, for the creation of much-needed baseline knowledge. Finally, Robinne will address several gaps and opportunities to advance wildfire-watershed risk research in Canada in the near-future.

Bio: François-Nicolas Robinne is a risk geographer whose research focuses on the relation between wildfires and water security. After completing his Master's of Risk & Disaster Management in France, he worked several years in the forestry and conservation sectors as a GIS and remote-sensing analyst. After moving to Canada, he received is PhD in forest biology and management in 2017 from the University of Alberta, and he did his postdoc as part of the Global Water Futures research program.
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He is now a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service, where he combines available wildfire and freshwater data to identify watershed risks and to protect Canadian water resources.

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forWater is featured in Climate Atlas of Canada's video - Quality Control: Wildfire, Water, and our Health Monica Emelko and Francois Robinne explain the connections between wildfire, water, and the health of Canadians.