Scott Mitchell

Biography

I studied geography and biology at Queen’s University at Kingston, and geography and environmental studies at the University of Toronto. Before coming to Carleton, I was a faculty member at the University of Toronto for a year, and worked on several research projects there in addition to my doctoral studies. This included work on soil erosion and environmental decision support systems in the Loess Plateau region of China, evaluation of potential forest nitrogen saturation and lake acidification in the Adirondack region of New York State, and a project looking at new methods for measuring and classifying Canada’s forest inventory. In 2003, while working on that last project, I joined Carleton University, and have been working here ever since, teaching in all the programs offered by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. I am a co-director of Carleton’s Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Laboratory, and most of my graduate students work out of that facility. We work on a range of projects analyzing and developing analysis tools for impacts of spatial patterns on environmental processes; some more specific research themes are listed below. Many in the lab are involved in a large project studying the role of spatial and temporal heterogeneity in farmland on regional biodiversity, first in eastern Ontario, and now being replicated in various locations in Europe. I also study primary productivity patterns in agricultural areas, including natural grasslands, under both “known” conditions and climate change scenarios. A lot of my current research effort is to further develop and demonstrate the potential of a spatial modelling framework to study impacts of alternative climate scenarios, especially with respect to changes to extreme weather, on Ontario’s agricultural sector.

Research Interest

Uncertainty in environmental modelling and monitoring Geographic Information Systems, decision support, and model interfaces primary productivity / crop yield, carbon cycling and landscape productivity patterns, especially in semi-arid areas