Colin Courtney Mustaphi contact info

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Biography:

I use sediment stratigraphies to reconstruct past environmental conditions using sedimentological and palaeoecological methods. By studying the past we can start to understand how ecosystems will respond to future climatic and land-use changes and other anthropogenic effects. My recent research interest focuses on characterising past climatic, vegetation, and disturbance regime variability, to understand the mechanisms controlling ecosystem processes and how human activity has been an integral mechanism of landscape evolution to varying degrees.

I am interested in how humans interact with their environment and what these modifications do to the world around us. I use a multidisciplinary approach by combining paleoenvironmental, archaeological, anthropological, historical, and remote sensing data – to disentangle signals of natural and anthropogenic influences on ecosystems and landscapes. By investigating the characteristics and consequences of human modifications to environments in the recent past we build a lens to examine potential future trajectory scenarios for managed landscapes. I am also interested in the social values and perceptions of land and land cover as well as multi-stakeholder consensus building for land management policy, regulation and practices. This type of research supports pathways to sustainable outcomes and our policy-relevant science is used to inform principles-based policies and management decisions. Other applications of this research are risk- and evidence-based approaches in cultural and natural resource management, insurance costings, crisis response and management, natural hazard risk assessments and planning, and regional security studies.

I have been involved in previous and on-going projects in tropical East Africa, the Arctic, mountain areas of western North America, and peri-urban areas in eastern Canada.

Postdoc in the Geoecology Group, Environmental Sciences, University of Basel (2018-2024)
SIDA funded ‘African Resilience to Climate Change’ project focused on northwestern Tanzania (2017-2021)
World Bank Africa Centers of Excellence (ACEII) programme exchange to WISE-FUTURES, Arusha, Tanzania (2017–present)
NERC-Arup Global Research Challenge Innovation Strategic Partnerships, Environment Dept, U. of York
Marie Curie Experienced Researcher, University of York Institute for Tropical Ecosystems
2013 PhD Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre
2008 MSc Geography, University of Ottawa Laboratory for Paleoclimatology and Climatology
2006 BA Geography with History, University of Ottawa

Current projects:

University of Basel Research Fund: Unveiling temporal and spatial patterns of microplastic burial in freshwaters through a reservoirs (2022-2023)
Palaeoenvironmental and archaeological synthesis of East Africa
Historical patterns of fire in Africa – the Global Charcoal Database
Human-environment interactions in East Africa
Serengeti Experimental Fire project – Leverhulme Fire Network through Colin Beale (U of York, biology dept)
The Holocene evolution of forest fire controls in interior British Columbia, Canada
Long-term perspectives on bark beetle outbreaks in the forests of western North America
Global trends in fire activity – PAGES Global Paleofire Working Group
Terrestrial-aquatic interactions at small montane watersheds: the role of wildfire on freshwater trophic cascades
Controls of High Arctic biogeochemical cycling of mercury
Participant in Oceans2k (PAGES working group)