MEETING PREP — Dr. Mark S. Johnson
Canada Research Chair in Ecohydrology · IRES + EOAS, University of British Columbia
THIS WEEK · TBD
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Who He Is
Position
Professor, IRES + Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences
Chair
Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) — Ecohydrology
Lab
UBC Ecohydrology Research Group + IWAL (CFI-funded)
Citations
6,900+ citations on Google Scholar
Awards
Charles A. McDowell Award (UBC — young faculty research)
Languages
English, Portuguese, Spanish
Email
mark.johnson@ubc.ca
Twitter
@ecohydrologist
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His Research — What He Actually Does
Citizen science expert Water quality Ecohydrology BC-focused NSERC network leader
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Why He's a Great Fit — The BC Angle
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Q&A Prep — Click to Expand
"Tell me about your platform"
It's a citizen science app for beach and lake water quality. Users collect GPS-tagged, timestamped assessments — photos, field observations, water quality indicators. I've got 356+ assessments across Alberta. On the backend, I've built satellite analysis pipelines using Sentinel-2 and Landsat for algal bloom prediction and temporal trend analysis. The whole system is built to be scalable — adding BC lakes would be straightforward.
"What are your accuracy results?"
Cyanobacteria prediction R² = 0.69 for rivers, chlorophyll-a forecasting R² = 0.48–0.61 for lakes. I use water-type-specific models — separate for tidal, lake, and river because the physics are different. I also do multi-year temporal heatmaps showing algae progression — I can show you a 5-year animation for Eagle Lake near Strathmore. If he asks about data quality validation: That's actually a big reason I reached out to you specifically. Your 2017 paper on citizen science data quality for DOC monitoring — those six lessons about participant perspectives affecting data outcomes — that's exactly the kind of rigorous evaluation my platform needs. I've got the data collection infrastructure, but I need an academic lens on validating it.
"What would an NSERC Alliance look like?"
There are a couple of ways this could work. The simplest: you as PI at UBC, me as industry partner contributing in-kind through the platform plus co-funding. But there's also a bigger multi-institutional picture forming — I'm in touch with Dr. Hassan at UCalgary on remote sensing, Dr. Baulch at USask on eutrophication, and Dr. Vinebrooke at UAlberta on limnology. There's potential for an Alliance that spans AB + BC + SK with complementary expertise at each institution. Alberta Innovates has confirmed this fits their Water Innovation program for the cash match. If he's interested in the bigger picture: Your citizen science methodology expertise plus your BC field sites would be the western anchor. Hassan brings satellite geomatics, Baulch brings harmful algal bloom science, Vinebrooke brings lake ecology. Each researcher gets their own piece to run. The platform connects everything — standardized data collection feeding into all four research streams.
"What about the cash match?"
Alberta Innovates confirmed the project fits their Water Innovation program. I've been in touch with Shane Patterson there. For the BC component, there may be equivalent provincial programs. My in-kind contribution from the platform is around $50–75K. With Alliance Advantage, NSERC matches partner cash at 2:1 — so every dollar of cash match unlocks two from NSERC.
"What do you need from me specifically?"
Two things. First, your citizen science methodology — rigorous evaluation of data quality, participant engagement, how to scale volunteer monitoring networks. You literally wrote the paper on this. Second, your BC connections and field knowledge — Okanagan lakes, coastal watersheds, your forWater network. My platform is Alberta-proven but untested in BC, and your research sites and students could be the deployment pathway.
"Are there other researchers involved?"
Yes — Dr. Quazi Hassan at UCalgary, geomatics engineering and remote sensing. Dr. Helen Baulch at USask, eutrophication and harmful algal blooms in prairie waters. And Dr. Rolf Vinebrooke at UAlberta, lake ecology and paleolimnology — he was independently recommended by two colleagues. Nothing is formalized yet, but there's real interest from all sides.
"Student involvement?"
Absolutely — the platform is a natural fit for grad students. Field data collection campaigns, citizen science program design and evaluation, algorithm development, BC lake monitoring. I'd be happy to support an HQP component — students get a real deployed system to work with, not a toy dataset.
"Why BC? You're based in Alberta."
Okanagan lakes have serious HAB issues, there's strong public interest tied to the tourism economy, and there's a monitoring gap for recreational water quality. My platform already handles tidal, lake, and river assessments — I have 225 tidal beaches in the database from BC coastal work. Expanding the freshwater side into BC Okanagan and Interior lakes is a natural next step, and having a UBC research partner makes that credible.
"Commercialization plan?"
The app is already built and field-tested. We generate premium environmental reports — 24+ page documents with satellite analysis, algae heatmaps, water quality scoring. Research improves the algorithms, which get deployed directly into the platform. Municipal adoption is the commercial pathway — I'm in conversation with several Alberta towns. BC municipalities with HAB-affected lakes would be a new market.
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NSERC Grants — What You Need to Know
Alliance Advantage (formerly Option 1) — The Main One
  • Funding: $20K–$1M/year, 1–5 year duration
  • Cost sharing: 2:1 (NSERC:partner) — every $1 of partner cash unlocks $2 from NSERC
  • Requires at least one partner with recognized cash contributions for cost-sharing
  • Partner cash is the key — in-kind (your platform) is valued but doesn't trigger NSERC matching
  • Continuous intake — no fixed deadline, apply anytime
  • Private sector partners: must be Canadian-incorporated with commercial activity. Under 5 employees = supplemental questionnaire required.
  • Multi-institutional OK — one PI at lead institution, co-applicants at other universities. Each institution signs off.
  • This is the most likely grant type for your project
Alliance Society (formerly Option 2) — The Alternative
  • NSERC covers up to 100% of project costs — no cash match required from partner
  • Still needs a partner org that would be recognized for cost-sharing (even without contributing cash)
  • Designed for projects with societal impact where commercial partners aren't the right fit
  • Not-for-profit partners qualify without cash contributions
  • Could solve the Nimpact problem: if Nimpact can't meet the private-sector partner requirements for Advantage, a Society grant with Nimpact as a not-for-profit or with a municipal/NGO partner could work
  • Continuous intake — apply anytime
Discovery Grants — Background
  • Individual researcher grants — no industry partner needed
  • Typically $20–50K/year for 5 years, curiosity-driven research
  • Hassan already holds one — means he's NSERC-funded and knows the system
  • Not the right vehicle for your project (no industry collaboration), but good to know researchers' track records
  • Johnson likely holds one too as a CRC holder — ask him
CREATE — Collaborative Research and Training Experience
  • $100K–300K/year for up to 6 years — focused on training HQP (students/postdocs)
  • Multi-institutional by design — requires researchers from multiple universities
  • Needs industrial/government partners for student placements and training
  • Could complement an Alliance grant — Alliance funds the research, CREATE funds the students
  • Competitive — annual deadline, ~20% success rate
  • Good fit if the multi-PI network grows — 4 universities + industry partner = classic CREATE structure
Alliance – Mitacs Accelerate (Joint Program)
  • Streamlined version combining NSERC Alliance with Mitacs internships
  • Funds grad students/postdocs to work on the industry-academic project
  • UCalgary has an active 2025–26 call for this program
  • Worth mentioning — could fund a student at UBC to work on BC deployment of the platform
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Multi-Institutional Alliance — The Big Picture
How Multi-Institutional Alliances Work
  • One PI at lead institution submits the application. Co-applicants at other universities.
  • Each participating university must provide institutional sign-off (e-approval through NSERC portal)
  • Funding flows through lead institution — but budget can allocate portions to each university's researchers
  • No limit on co-applicants — a researcher can be PI or co-applicant on multiple Alliance grants
  • Scale is a strength — NSERC explicitly supports "long-term projects involving researchers across several universities"
  • Each researcher brings their own lab, students, equipment — NSERC funds the coordination + new research costs
The Dream Team (4 universities, 4 provinces)
  • UBC — Johnson: citizen science methodology, DOC/water quality, BC field sites (Okanagan + coastal). Ecohydrology lens.
  • UCalgary — Hassan: remote sensing, geomatics, satellite retrieval algorithms, atmospheric correction. AB field sites.
  • USask — Baulch: eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, prairie water chemistry. SK field sites.
  • UAlberta — Vinebrooke: lake ecology, paleolimnology, climate impacts on lakes. AB field sites.
  • Nimpact (industry): deployed platform, ground truth data, municipal relationships, commercialization.
Why Multi-Institutional is Stronger
  • Geographic coverage — BC + AB + SK = western Canada water quality network. Much more compelling than single-province.
  • Complementary expertise — citizen science + remote sensing + limnology + bloom chemistry. No single lab has all four.
  • Multiple HQP streams — students at each institution, different methods, shared platform. Training pipeline is a huge review criterion.
  • Bigger budget justified — multi-institutional projects can ask for more ($500K–$1M/year) without seeming inflated
  • Provincial funding stacking — AB Innovates for Alberta portion, BC equivalent programs for BC portion
  • NSERC loves this — strategic, cross-institutional, industry-partnered, public health impact
Who Should Be Lead PI?
  • Discussion point for the call — don't push Johnson into any role yet
  • Johnson pros as lead: CRC holder (dedicated research time), NSERC network experience (forWater), citizen science focus matches the platform
  • Hassan pros as lead: geomatics/RS is the core technical challenge, holds Discovery Grant, engineering school prestige
  • Baulch pros as lead: HABs are the public health hook, senior researcher, prairie focus
  • Could also start smaller — bilateral Alliance with Johnson/UBC first, expand later
  • Let the academics sort this out — your role is industry partner regardless of who leads
The Employee Problem — Status
  • Alliance Advantage: private sector partner with <5 FT employees needs to complete a supplemental questionnaire. Not automatically disqualifying.
  • Hassan flagged that NSERC wants 2+ FT employees for private sector partners. This may be specific to Advantage.
  • Alliance Society: cash contribution NOT required from partner. NSERC covers up to 100%. This may sidestep the employee issue.
  • Other workarounds: (1) hire a 2nd person (grant itself could fund an HQP), (2) find a 2nd industry partner, (3) use Alliance Society instead, (4) Alberta Innovates as the cash partner, Nimpact as in-kind only
  • Don't lead with this — mention it if it comes up. Focus on the science.
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Know Your Own Work — Technical Deep Dive
Platform Overview — My BeachBook
  • Flutter cross-platform app (Android, iOS, Web)
  • Firebase backend: Firestore, Storage, Auth, App Check
  • Google Maps integration with marker clustering
  • Google ML Kit for on-device image labeling (50% confidence threshold)
  • iNaturalist API for species identification
  • Google Gemini AI for description generation
  • Geohash-based proximity validation (precision 9 = ~100m)
  • 355 beaches in database — 225 tidal, 82 lake, 48 river
  • 357 total contributions across 3 countries, 5 provinces/states
  • All submissions moderated by admin before inclusion
Satellite Data Pipeline — What You Actually Use
DATA SOURCES
  • Sentinel-2 L2A (ESA) — primary. Via Element84 STAC API, Planetary Computer + Copernicus fallbacks
  • Landsat 8/9 Collection 2 L2 (USGS) — thermal band (lwir11) for water surface temp
  • NASA SRTM — elevation/terrain (±6m vertical)
  • VIIRS DNB (NASA Black Marble) — night lights
  • WorldPop — population density at 100m
  • JRC Global Surface Water — lake extent detection
PROCESSING
  • Resolution: downloaded at 120m (from native 10-20m) for computational efficiency
  • Cloud masking via SCL — keeps vegetation, bare soil, water, snow; masks clouds + shadows
  • xarray + stackstac for lazy loading and chunked processing
  • Multi-level caching: in-memory → disk (NetCDF .nc) → STAC download
  • Not using GEE for reports — migrated to STAC APIs for independence
ML Models — Accuracy Numbers (Know These Cold)
V2 MODELS (XGBoost + substrate features, 33 input features)
  • Lakes — Chlorophyll-a: R² = 0.62 (+12.9% over v1)
  • Rivers — Chlorophyll-a: R² = 0.59 (+237% over v1)
  • Tidal — Chlorophyll-a: R² = 0.59
  • Rivers — Cyanobacteria Index: R² = 0.69
MODEL DETAILS
  • XGBoost primary, GradientBoosting fallback
  • Water-type-specific models (different physics for tidal/lake/river)
  • 33 features: 15 base + 10 substrate + 3 dimension + 2 biological + 3 engineered
  • 5-fold cross-validation when sample ≥ 30
Ground Truth Collection — What Makes Your Data Unique
  • 40+ data categories per assessment: flora (kelp, seaweed, eelgrass), fauna (25+ species), substrate (sand, pebbles, rocks, boulders, mud), driftwood, dimensions, garbage, wind, people
  • All GPS-tagged, timestamped, photo-documented
  • Geohash-validated (must be physically at beach)
  • Multiple contributions aggregated per beach (averaged numerics, deduplicated species)
  • ML-assisted identification (Google ML Kit + iNaturalist)
  • Admin-moderated quality control pipeline
  • Key selling point to Johnson: this is a real deployed citizen science platform with standardized protocols. His 2017 paper identified data quality as the #1 concern — your platform addresses this with geolocation validation, ML-assisted QC, and admin moderation.
Algae Heatmap Pipeline — The Demo Piece
  • 5-year temporal analysis (current year minus 4)
  • Summer/growing season only (May-Sept for northern hemisphere)
  • Chlorophyll proxy: (Green/Red - 0.9) × 27.3, clamped [0, 30] mg/m³
  • Lake detection via JRC Global Surface Water dataset
  • Sampling grid: 100m spacing across entire lake surface
  • Output: per-year PNG heatmaps (blue→green→yellow→red)
  • Animated GIF + temporal video (MP4): week-by-week bloom progression
  • Good demo for Johnson — visual, compelling, shows the satellite pipeline in action
Report System — What Gets Generated
  • 24+ page premium report as Word (.docx) + PDF
  • 10 major sections: satellite metrics, imagery analysis, environmental maps, lake analysis, advanced analytics, algae monitoring, community observations, shoreline risk, recommendations, appendices
  • 5-year algae heatmaps + animated GIF + temporal video
  • Nearest-beach comparison (5 closest in database)
  • Regional benchmarking by climate zone (355 beach database)
  • GIS export package with FGDC-compliant shapefiles
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Lines That Show You Did Your Homework
Your 2017 paper on citizen science data quality for DOC monitoring — those six lessons about participant perspectives — that's exactly the kind of evaluation framework my platform needs
I saw you lead the Pacific Maritime Node for the forWater NSERC network — that multi-institutional experience is exactly what a cross-Canada water quality alliance would need
The Integrated Watershed Analysis Lab at UBC is impressive — the CFI investment in that facility shows serious institutional support for this kind of work
The Okanagan HAB situation is a natural test case — tourism-driven public interest, recreational water safety concerns, and a monitoring gap that citizen science can fill
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Value Exchange

Your Value to Him

  • Deployed citizen science platform — his research is about citizen science methodology. Your app is a live implementation he can study and publish on.
  • Ground truth data — 356+ GPS-tagged, timestamped, photo-documented field points. Real citizen-collected data to evaluate.
  • Alberta expansion — he's BC-focused. Your AB data gives him a cross-provincial comparison — bigger study, bigger impact.
  • Industry partner for NSERC — solves the partner org requirement for Alliance grants
  • AB Innovates cash match — solves the #1 NSERC Alliance pain point
  • Commercialization pathway — real municipal adoption potential, not hypothetical. NSERC values this.

His Value to You

  • Citizen science credibility — published expert in citizen science data quality. His name validates your approach.
  • BC expansion pathway — field sites, students, institutional backing for BC lakes
  • CRC prestige — Canada Research Chair adds weight to any grant application
  • NSERC network experience — already runs forWater multi-institutional network. Knows the system.
  • IRES interdisciplinary home — sustainability-focused institute values applied, community-facing work
  • Ecohydrology lens — carbon-water interactions add a dimension your other partners don't cover
  • Publication pipeline — 6,900+ citations, productive researcher
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Watch Out — Don't Say