McMaster to receive $3.7M in research grants

McMaster University has received a total of $3.7 million in research grants, with 19 researchers receiving funds.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council gave their largest sum to Altaf Arain, the Associate Director of McMaster’s School of Geography and Earth Sciences. Arain, who is also the Director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change, is to receive $535,457 for climate change research.

Arain, along with his team of graduate and undergraduate students will be studying the typical ecosystems that grow in the Hamilton area.

“The forests are important because they provide resources for us,” said Arain. Forests are home and protection to many birds and other wildlife, and have watershed implications as well.

Arain explained that our region used to have a very different landscape before it became primarily agricultural. Since industrialization, many forests that were removed were manually replanted, covering 20 to 30 percent of Southern Ontario. “We want to see the impacts. These [forests] are planted, and therefore are different from natural ecosystems,” said Arain.

Arain aims to test these forested ecosystems by installing canopy cameras, monitoring carbon, energy flux, snowfall and air pollution. He will be working alongside Environment Canada.

This grant will be looking at ecology measurements using Ground Penetrating Radar to look below the surface at biomass organisms. Soil variables such as decomposition will be studied, measured at 20 hertz, meaning that the soil will be tested 20 times per second.

Measurements will occur 24/7 for the next few years. “We want to see if the carbon stored in the soils will be affected in the future if we have changes in the climate,” said Arain.

After these measurements are taken, the data is then used to simulate the ecosystem in a model.

“Modeling and measurement go hand in hand,” said Arain.

Using the models, new processes are found and new scenarios can be tested, and then extrapolated to other areas of research on future climate change.

Extreme climates and weather conditions could potentially affect a number of environmental factors involved in the tests, including endangered plant and animal species.

The economies of the forests are examined in terms of the value and vulnerability of plants and wood that will be harvested. Carbon credits may be a potential benefit of this research, which are part of an effort to cut down nationally on greenhouse gases because natural carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere.