Conway, Tenley

Full Research Description:
I am an environmental geographer with foci in (1) land use/land cover modelling, (2) urban ecological conditions, and (3) approaches to environmental management. I use a range of methods, including GIS analysis, spatial modeling, remote sensing, personal interviews, and historical data analysis. My land use/land cover research explores urban expansion, broadly defined to incorporate suburban and exurban development. I am interested in identifying the drivers of landscape change and developing modelling techniques to predict potential future land use/land cover scenarios.

My focus on urban ecological conditions addresses three questions: (1) what are the best approaches to mapping urban vegetation; (2) how do different aspects of urban form and socioeconomic characteristics relate to local vegetation heterogeneity and; (3) what is the impact of historic conditions and municipal policy on current vegetation conditions. I am currently working on several projects funded through SSHRC grants that address these questions, as well as underlying issues regarding data collection, using locations within the GTA as case studies. Finally, I am also interested in planning and management approaches to protecting biophysical resources within human-dominated landscapes. A recently project that falls under this heading compared Ontario’s new greenbelt with the earlier Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan.