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The city of Leh was the capital of the Kingdom of Ladakh from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. Over time, due to wars, politics, and isolation, the capital city fell into a state of disrepair soon after the royal family was exiled. An explosion in tourism over the last few decades has seen a revival in the local community but most of the benefits including generated tourism revenue have been directed towards development outside the historical boundary of Leh. The residents of what is now known as Leh Old Town suffer from poverty, lack of basic infrastructures such as drainage, and limited access to water. Additionally, Leh Old Town was also placed under World’s Monument Watch in 2008 due to issues related to low-scale modern construction and urgent need of repair for 55% of the historic buildings. Climate change has also been cited as a cause of concern due to issues related to faster melting glaciers and flash floods due to the lack of a drainage system. The main aim of this practicum is to study and demonstrate the role that landscape architects can play in the rehabilitation of historical alpine settlements that have been adversely affected by anthropological factors such as politics, climate change, and over-tourism. It does so by highlighting the cultural and architectural heritage of the Old Town of Leh, known as Kharyog in Ladakhi, and demonstrating the use of indigenous construction materials and methods that have been superseded by modern materials imported from other parts of the country. It also aims to study how the positive effects of tourism can be distributed equally throughout a community to improve the quality of life for the residents of Leh Old Town.

When work started on a code for energy conservation in buildings, a preference was expressed for a performance code rather than a prescriptive code. With this type of code, the level of performance or energy budget must be specified and will vary depending on factors including building occupancy and geographical location. This note is one of three giving suggested norms for energy consumption. Two school building layouts, one extended and one compact, were developed. The energy consumption of primary and secondary schools with these layouts was computed. The energy norms derived from these analyses were plotted and compared to recorded energy figures for existing schools.

The COPE (cost-effective open plan environments) project investigates the effect of open-plan office design on the indoor environment and on the occupant satisfaction with that environment. COPE is sponsored by a consortium of North American public and private-sector organizations and relies on field, laboratory and simulation studies to address designaspects like acoustics, lighting quality, indoor air quality, operating costs and energy efficiency. This paper describes the influence of various design variables on the daylight availability and electric lighting requirements in open plan office spaces using the RADIANCE-based annual daylight simulation method DAYSIM. To make simulation results more reliable a manual and an automated blind control strategy have been considered. Five climatic centers which represent the ambient daylight conditions of 186 North American Metropolitan Areas have been identified. For these five climatic centers over 1000 officesettings have been investigated which feature varying external shading situations, glazing types, facade orientations ceiling designs and partition arrangements. The daylight performance of the offices was expressed in terms of their daylight autonomy distributions and energy savings for an ideally dimmed lighting system. The simulation results reveal, that the daylight availability in peripheral offices allowsfor electric lighting energy savings between 25% and 60% for an ideally commissioned, dimmed lighting system depending on the underlying blind control strategy. 2 nd row offices receive considerably less daylight even though a reduced partition height and increased ceiling reflectances can double electric lighting energy savings up to 40%. Conference Proceedings of the 2002 Summer Study of the American Commission for an Energy Efficient Environment (ACE): 18 August 2002, Pacific Grove, CA., U.S.A.

This research examines energy poverty in the Daniel McIntyre and St. Matthews (DMSM) neighbourhoods in the city of Winnipeg. Energy poverty, defined as households spending more than 6% of their income on energy expenditures, affects as many as 50% of households in DMSM. Energy poverty can be alleviated through energy retrofits for dwellings such as weather stripping; increasing insulation in exterior walls, the attic and basement; and installing a high-efficiency furnace. The recommendations include: establishing consistent housing and energy efficiency policies; increasing the flexibility of utility on-bill financing; levying the necessary capital for energy retrofits through municipal financing mechanisms; increasing the knowledge and capacity of local residents; increasing the knowledge and capacity of local contractors for sustainable design and construction; creating a provincial strategy to increase the energy efficiency of social housing; developing low-income energy efficiency programs for rental properties; and increasing access to renewable energy sources.

Extracting heat from a sewage pipe through a typical horizontal ground heat exchanger has recently been introduced as a renewable energy alternative to reduce fossil fuel usage. This paper presents a novel design for a ground heat exchanger that extracts heat from the surrounding soil and sewage within the pipe while simultaneously being carried to a wastewater treatment plant. This research focuses on the long-term efficiency of the system under transient conditions in a cold climate. A numerical model using COMSOL Multiphysics was developed to verify the sustainability of the system for over 25 years. The model used constant inlet fluid temperatures to evaluate heat by conductive and convective heat transfer mechanisms within the pipe and surrounding soils by considering phase change of pore water. The results showed, by adopting the operation strategy proposed in this study, a maximum temperature change in the surrounding soil adjacent to the heat extraction system over 25 years was 0.10°C during the heating season in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The horizontal distance at which the heat extraction system did not show an impact on temperature change of adjacent soil was determined at 4 meters. Critical parameters in this evaluation were system depth, sewage level, and the high-density polyethylene pipe thermal properties. The sustainability of the system was not affected by the system depth due to thermal balancing between climatic, subsurface and sewage heat fluxes. Sustainable behavior was achieved at 50% and 75% of sewage pipe capacity. The effect on thermal performance from the high-density polyethylene pipe thermal properties was deemed insignificant.

Understanding drivers of habitat use of mobile species is critical for understanding the impacts of climate change and formulating management plans. Eastern Beaufort Sea (EBS) beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas), an important subsistence food source for Inuvialuit, are known to form large aggregations in the Mackenzie Estuary each summer; however, environmental drivers of this habitat use are not understood. Passive acoustic monitoring was used to record beluga presence during this aggregation at key locations in the Mackenzie Estuary, while simultaneously recording environmental and oceanographic data. Belugas moved further into the estuary during cold oceanic influxes and did not use locations which typically see high use during high-speed winds. In an extreme case, a large storm prevented belugas from using the area for five days and negatively affected the subsistence beluga hunt. This information can inform decisions by northern communities and policy makers, aiding in management of the EBS beluga population.

The Arctic is rapidly changing. Warming temperatures are both facilitating new opportunities and threatening biodiversity. Despite a global effort to conserve biodiversity, and the recent acceleration of related conservation initiatives in Canada, species are already responding to a changing Arctic. However, our abilities to assess these changes, including shifting distributions and their impacts, are limited. Therefore, innovative approaches are necessary to focus the vastness of the Arctic to key habitats, the breadth of species diversity to key indicators of change, and to integrate knowledge in order to predict and manage a future Arctic. In this thesis, I establish Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. as indicators of ecosystem-level change in the Canadian Arctic. More broadly, however, I have developed tools and strategies to help assess the impending biodiversity crisis in the Arctic. I developed a novel model to successfully apply citizen science to monitor rapidly shifting biodiversity in the Canadian Arctic and I extend the breadth of community-based monitoring across species and their habitats to encompass broad-scale areas and fine-scale assessments. By aligning thermal tolerances with thermal regimes at critical groundwater spring oases, I developed a novel model that predicts watersheds vulnerable to colonizations by salmon, and identifies the associated risk of competition with native char. I also use genetic tools to establish that chum salmon O. keta colonized the upper Mackenzie River at deglaciation, and that vagrants are currently accessing the Mackenzie River via coastal pathways. Together, I advance science regarding: 1) the application of citizen science to monitor biodiversity shifts in the Arctic; 2) predictions of distributional shifts to extreme environments; and 3) assessing the viability of the Arctic freshwater and marine environments as fish habitat over the past several thousand years. By integrating the subsistence way-of-life with scientific approaches, we can better manage the development opportunities and predict the conservation impacts in a future Arctic.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “Adaptation to climate change is defined as, an adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities” (IPCC 2007). Adaptation is required due to the increase in the number of natural disasters and extreme changes in environmental conditions in coastal areas that are a function of sea level rise, floods, extreme heat, drought, and coastal storm surge from severe storms. To reduce the impacts of climate change risks in the future, coastal communities through local government initiatives are compelled to develop and implement grass roots community plans. This study is part of an International Community-University Research Alliance (ICURA), “C-Change” that aims to develop community-based adaptation protocols based on best practices and through the evaluation of the scientific method of problem solving designed to help coastal communities be sustainable and to protect their local coastal environments. To this end, the thesis reviews the international development and application of adaptive strategies related to climate change and evaluates these global strategies for identification of best practices and application to coastal communities. The objective of this research is to design and develop improved C-Change community adaptation frameworks by analyzing the applications of international protocols and local action plans with respect to the scientific method and of problem solving through using AHP (Analytic hierarchy process) as a tool, and by choosing best practices to provide guidelines for communities’ climate adaptation plans for the C-Change ICURA coastal communities in Canada.

Engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) are special types of fibre-reinforced cementitious composites (FRCC) with higher strain capacity which can be achieved with low fibre volume as low as 2% and total elimination of coarse aggregates. Due to the outstanding performance of ECCs, they are suitable for various construction and repair applications. However, in order for ECCs to achieve their properties; a high amount of binder which is primarily composed of Portland cement (PC) is used alongside a special type of ultrafine silica sand (USS) which is different from the conventional natural fine aggregates. The production of PC is known to be detrimental to the environment due to its high carbon dioxide emissions coupled with the high consumption of natural resources. Thus, the high use of PC content in ECCs posed a sustainability threat. Similarly, the USS used in ECCs are not readily available everywhere and are expensive. The processing of the USS coupled with its transportation over long distances would also increase the cost and embodied carbon of ECCs. Hence, in order to promote more development and applications of ECCs for various applications; this dissertation aims to provide innovative ways to improve the sustainability of ECCs and their performances. This dissertation offers four solutions to improve the sustainability of ECCs which are (i) use of unconventional industrial by-products as partial replacement of PC (ii) total replacement of PC in ECCs with alternative sustainable binders (iii) replacement of USS in ECCs with recycled materials and (iv) the use of supplementary cementitious materials to replace a high volume of PC. The findings from this study revealed sustainable ECCs with acceptable mechanical and durability performance can be achieved with the use of alternative binders or replacement of the conventional USS used in ECC mixtures. The sustainability and cost assessment of the ECCs indicated that the incorporation of industrial by-products such as blast furnace slag (BFS) especially at higher content is beneficial to reducing the negative environmental impact and economic burden associated with ECCs compared to the conventional ECC. The sustainability index and cost index of the ECCs further showed that the use of BFS is more beneficial when the sustainability and cost of the ECCs are compared with the corresponding performance. Similarly, the use of recycled materials as an alternative to USS was found to result in a significant reduction in the embodied carbon and cost of ECCs. The use of recycled materials such as expanded glass (EG) as aggregates in ECCs was also found to improve the thermal insulation properties of ECCs making such ECC suitable for the production of building envelope elements.

This thesis estimates technical and environmental efficiencies for a sample of Ontario dairy farms and examines the relationship between these efficiency measures and characteristics of the farm and farmer. Using a stochastic input distance function to estimate the production relationship between four inputs and four outputs (one of which is greenhouse gas emissions), we find that the Ontario dairy farms have a high level of average technical efficiency but relatively low environmental efficiency. There is a positive and significant correlation between technical and environmental efficiencies. Environmental efficiency measure increases with herd size. The findings suggest there is not a trade-off between technical and environmental efficiency for Ontario dairy farms. Instead, reducing the amount of inputs used to produce a given amount of milk will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.