Our Team

Dr. Brad Stelfox

Dr. Brad Stelfox established Forem Technologies and the ALCES Group in 1995 and is the architect and developer of the ALCES model. He is an adjunct professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, and the Department of Environmental Design, University of Calgary. Brad's research and teachings focus on the interface between human land uses and regional landscapes. The major development stream of Forem has been ALCES (A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator), a program gaining rapid acceptance by governments, industry, the scientific community, and NGO's to explore issues between landscapes, land uses (agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, mining, human populations, tourism, and transportation sectors), and ecological and economic integrity. Dr. Stelfox has received the Alberta Emerald Foundation Award (2004) and the Alberta Science and Technology Award (2003) for his contributions with the ALCES model in advancing understanding of land use sustainability issues and in seeking solutions that balance economic, social, and ecological indicators.

Brad and his wife Sarah live west of Calgary near Bragg Creek with their three children. When Brad is not working on the ALCES model or guest lecturing on land use issues, he is likely on horseback exploring the mountain trails of Alberta's east slopes.

Matt Carlson

Matt is an ecologist interested in applying a systems dynamics approach to communicate land use concepts and develop pragmatic solutions to natural resource management challenges. Over the past ten years, Matt has developed and applied simulation tools to explore the future effects of land use in a variety of landscapes from the Mackenzie Watershed in northwestern Canada to the Mbaracayu Biosphere Reserve in Paraguay.  Recent projects have focused on applying ALCES to inform the development of land-use plans that appropriately balance ecological and socioeconomic objectives.  Matt is also an ecologist for the Canadian Boreal Initiative, and has a Masters of Science in Conservation Biology from the University of Alberta. Matt lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.  When not at work Matt can be found running trails, or after his kids.

Shawn Francis

Shawn Francis is a landscape ecologist and land use planner with fourteen years of professional experience working throughout western and northern Canada.  His focus with the ALCES Group is land-use planning, GIS and the development and application of ALCES Mapper™.

Shawn completed his M.Sc. at the University of Alberta in 1996, specializing in landscape ecology. His research focused on fire ecology and natural disturbance patterns in southwest Yukon. Following his graduate degree, he was the manager/senior ecologist for an environmental consulting firm in Whitehorse that provided services to northern governments, industries and First Nations. Shawn has lead or participated in a number of resource planning, impact assessment, First Nations training, ecological land classification, cumulative effects management and land-use modeling projects.

Recently Shawn was the Coordinator/Senior Land Use Planner for the North Yukon Planning Commission, successfully guiding the development of the first First Nation land claim-based plan to be approved in Yukon. Coordinating a multi-disciplinary planning team, he provided facilitation and technical assistance to a six-person public planning body balancing energy, transportation, mineral and tourism land uses with a range of ecological and social values. In the planning exercise, ALCES was utilized to examine different land-use scenarios and recommend practical indicators and thresholds to manage potential cumulative land use impacts.  

Originally from northeast Alberta, Shawn spent 12 years in Whitehorse. He, his wife and two children now live in Drumheller.

John Nishi

John completed a B.Sc. in Agriculture (1990) and a M.Sc. in Zoology (1993) at the University of Alberta, and was subsequently hired by the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) as the Kitikmeot Regional Biologist in the central arctic. After 5 years in the Kitikmeot, John took on the position of GNWT Bison Ecologist where he worked with northern communities and First Nations on issues concerning northern diseased bison management (i.e., wild herds infected with bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, and anthrax). Through collaboration with University researchers and other government agencies, John and colleagues contributed to conservation of wood bison by developing and implementing strategies for disease management and genetic conservation.
After 13 years as a northern wildlife biologist, John joined the ALCES Group in order to expand his career path to include today's important issues concerning landscape ecology. As human land-use and its footprint on the landscape is often the single most important factor that affects long-term sustainability and health of ecosystems, John feels that it is critically important for governments and the general public to understand cumulative effects in order to make balanced and responsible land-use decisions. As a member of the ALCES group, John's current focus is on the application of ALCES™ and its integration with other modeling tools to understand and address land use issues in northern Canada. He has been involved in several projects that are focused on woodland caribou in the boreal forests of northern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories, as well as migratory barren-ground caribou in the Canadian arctic.
John lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains southwest of Calgary. John is also a keen student of fly fishing and has competed internationally as a member of Fly Fishing Team Canada over the past seven years.

Cornel Yarmoloy

Cornel counts himself as fortunate to be born in Alberta and raised in the splendour of Banff National Park.  As a son of a biologist, Cornel gravitated towards the natural sciences, completing a Master’s degree in Environmental Design at the University of Calgary in 1983.  Cornel’s academic and professional interests have focussed on access management and its influence on physical and biological resources.  Cornel is keenly interested in landscape management issues and policy on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes and the Boreal Forest.

Since joining the ALCES team in 2008, Cornel has assisted with strategic and tactical development of ALCES business activities.  Project activities include involvement in cumulative effects assessment for the Government of Alberta’s Lower Athabasca Regional Plan; Athabasca Caribou Project 2009; Bow River Basin Cumulative Effects Study – Phase 1, business as usual and Phase 2 best practices; Blood Indian Reserve cumulative effects watershed analysis, Alberta Chip First Nations cumulative effects assessment and the  Ghost River Watershed Cumulative Effects Study (business as usual).   Current projects include modelling of natural capital valuations for the Upper Bow River Basin and the Ghost River Watershed Cumulative Effects Study (best practises).
 

Mika Sutherland

Mika was born and raised in the Northwest Territories and completed a biology degree at Queen's University. She worked in Yellowknife as a Wildlife Technician for the Government of the Northwest Territories, Department of Renewable Resources (now Environment and Natural Resources) for a dozen years. During this time, she also spent several years traveling, learning, and working abroad. Mika has recently completed an applied degree in geographic information systems (GIS) from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary, AB.

As part of the ALCES Group, Mika has been involved in GIS data preparation and analysis in projects related to cumulative effects monitoring in northeast Alberta (In Situ Oils Sands Footprint Monitoring) and continues to do GIS work more specifically related to ALCES model initialization (Alberta Caribou Committee - Athabasca Landscape Team, North Saskatchewan River Watershed and Dehcho Cumulative Effects Modelling). More recently, she has also been working with ALCES Mapper (Lower Athabasca Regional Plan, NW Saskatchewan Regional Planning ) to generate maps from ALCES output. Mika has been involved in several projects working as an ALCES analyst including a Petro-Canada Cumulative Effects Assessment and Athabasca Landscape Team project.

Mika lives and works SW of Calgary with her husband, John Nishi.

Karen Manuel

Karen has a Forest Technology Diploma from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and a B.Sc. degree in Botany from the University of Victoria.  After completing her degree in 1990, Karen consulted for 15 years in the oil and gas industry, where she worked extensively on contaminant assessment and remediation projects, environmental site assessments and in waste management consulting.  More recently, while working for Salmo Consulting and now the ALCES Group, Karen has worked on cumulative effects initiatives including developing a regional footprint monitoring protocol, assisting in two northern BC/AB regional cumulative effects studies, a northeast AB regional caribou management project, and two regional land use planning exercises in northeast AB and northwest SK.

In her role with the ALCES Group, Karen provides assistance in GIS data processing and analysis, and data gathering / input and model simulations with the ALCES landscape simulation model.  Karen also provides administrative support to the team.

Dr. Robert Hudson 

Dr. Bob Hudson , long-time friend, mentor, and colleague of the ALCES Group, passed away on August 17th, 2011 from complications associated with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease . From 1974 to 2011, Bob served as professor at the University of Alberta, where his contributions in the fields of wildlife ecology, systems dynamics, and computer simulation modeling were unparalleled and recognized internationally.

Bob’s visionary insight into wildlife ecology and land uses were instrumental in the career development of Brad Stelfox, John Nishi, Matt Carlson, and Michael Sullivan, and helped shape the development of the ALCES model and the ALCES Group. Bob was always interested in sharing innovative ideas about natural resource management and offer recommendations on ALCES model development.
Bob is survived by his wife Yasmin and their daughters Suraya and Tasreen.
Bob will be greatly missed by the ALCES Group, for his enduring wisdom, optimism, and leadership.

Click here to download the final lecture of Dr. Hudson.

More information about Bob Hudson can be found at the University of Alberta website at:
http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/ALES%20News/2011/08/FacultymournslossofBobHudson.aspx

 

Noah Purves-Smith

In 1997 after completing a course in Computer Engineering at the University of Victoria, and studying art fundamentals at the University of Calgary Noah created Ursudio Multimedia. A talented designer and programmer; Noah uses his talents to create effective web applications, designs, multimedia content and print advertising. Applying well-honed communication and team-building skills that Noah acquired after many years as a skipper on the Canadian National Sailing Team.
When not working on stunning multimedia designs, Noah can be found sailing or making music with family and friends. 

Jennifer Janzen  

Jennifer Janzen joined the ALCES group in 2008 as the project coordinator for Alberta Tomorrow, a web-based educational land-use simulator. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Land Use & Environmental Studies and Biology, and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Saskatchewan and has worked for various government and non-profit organizations as a plant ecologist and educator in Saskatchewan and Alberta. She taught high school Biology in Alberta for 10 years while at the same time working with the Elbow River Watershed Partnership and Parks Canada to develop lesson plans on various environmental issues.   She and her husband now live in Cochrane, raising two wonderful daughters and instilling in them an appreciation for our natural world.

Dr. Michael Sullivan  

Michael Sullivan's passion for wildlife has led him through three academic degrees at the University of Alberta and 25 years of fisheries, wildlife, and landuse management with the Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division. For much of this career, Dr. Sullivan's work has been focused on resolving fisheries and aquatic issues in the Lakeland and Athabasca areas of north-eastern Alberta. His successful work on restoring northern Alberta's walleye fisheries through the interaction of scientific models and public involvement has resulted in awards and recognition at local and international levels. Through close working relationships with other landscape management and research agencies (e.g., Parks Canada, Alberta Conservation Association, Alberta Cooperative Conservation Research Unit, Department of Fisheries and Oceans), Dr. Sullivan has built a network of strategic learning around the complex interplay between ecological and social systems. Michael is currently the Provincial Fisheries Scientist at Alberta Fish and Wildlife Division, Department of Sustainable Resource Development. He is also a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Renewable Resources (University of Alberta), where he is supervising graduate students, coordinating landscape-level research programs, and participating in ALCES projects with his colleagues at Forem Technologies.    

Dr. Christopher Shank

Chris Shank is a wildlife biologist interested in mountain ungulates, biodiversity and protected areas planning. Chris has been on staff and the Universities of British Columbia and Calgary and for many years was a biologist with the Governments of the Northwest Territories and Alberta. He is a past Chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. More recently, Chris led an International Union for the Conservation of Nature biodiversity conservation project in the mountains of northern Pakistan and successful efforts by the Wildlife Conservation Society to set up Afghanistan’s first national park.

Dr. Scott Heckbert  

Dr. Scott Heckbert is an Associate at ALCES Group, providing environmental economics research and spatially-explicit simulation modelling of land use policies. Dr. Heckbert is also an assistant professor at Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions and previously worked for 7 years as an environmental economist and modeler with CSIRO, Australia. Scott's research applies environmental economics using simulation modelling of integrated social-ecological systems. Dr. Heckbert completed his MSc (Agriculture and Resource Economics) at the University of Alberta, and PhD (Engineering: Geomatics) at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Research topics include benefit-cost analysis including values for ecosystem services, economics of greenhouse gas mitigation, design of market-based policy instruments for environmental management, water quality improvement for marine ecosystems, modelling the rise and fall of ancient societies, modelling patterns of urban sprawl, rangelands management, and supporting Indigenous land management for environmental and cultural benefits. Scott develops simulations using systems dynamics, agent-based models, cellular automata and networks, in order to build spatially-explicit simulations which represent biophysical and human processes.    

Dr. Dan Farr

Cecilia Latham (neé Arienti)

Cecilia received a Master of Science in Environmental Biology and Ecology from the University of Alberta in 2006. She was involved in several project involving integrated landscape management and cumulative effects modeling as part of the Integrated Landscape Management Chair program at the University of Alberta. For the past year, Cecilia has been working as a GIS consultant.