Areas of Research
Research on Sustainability, Climate Change and Energy Solutions are fundamental components of the SFU Strategic Research Plan 
for 2010-2015:
Climate Change Solutions
As a founding member of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), SFU researchers are well positioned to contribute to the development of innovative climate change solutions, seek new opportunities for positive adaptation to climate change solutions, and lead the way to a vibrant lowcarbon economy in BC and globally. PICS seeks to support transformative change in response to the many challenges raised by climate change through multidisciplinary research conducted in partnership with governments, the private sector, other researchers and civil society, in order to undertake research on, monitor, and assess the potential impacts of climate change, and to assess, develop and promote viable mitigation and adaptation options to better inform climate change policies and actions. PICS current research priorities are: the low carbon-emissions economy, sustainable communities, resilient ecosystems, social mobilization and carbon management in BC Forest.
The Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) are studying critical climate change impact topics: biodiversity, extreme weather, energy, water security, crop and food supply, population displacement, health risks, new technologies, and sea level rise.
The Climate Change Impact Consortium (CCIRC) is a group of researchers at Simon Fraser University whose research focuses on the secondary impacts of climate change on human health and ecosystem health.
The Climate, Oceans, and Paleo-Environments (COPE) Lab is part of the graduate program in the School of Resource and Environmental Management (REM) at Simon Fraser University (SFU), located in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. The overall objective for the COPE lab is to understand both natural and anthropogenic components of climate change and the carbon cycle. Their interdisciplinary group integrates ideas from climatology, meteorology, paleo-oceanography, Earth System Science and modeling, and geochemistry. The lab is led by Dr. Karen E. Kohfeld and currently includes four Masters students, two Ph.D. students, and one undergraduate.
What is Sustainability Research?
Sustainability research concerns the disciplined and rigorous investigation of the means to create and maintain conditions that enable societies to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is expected that knowledge discovered through this research will be communicated for the public benefit.
Sustainability research considers one or more of the ecological, economic, social and cultural factors and their interconnections necessary to create conditions that are at once sustainable, viable and equitable. Sustainability research can be interdisciplinary, crossing traditional academic areas.
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