Catherine Potvin

Catherine Potvin is a tropical forest ecologist and emeritus professor at McGill University in the Department of Biology. Her scientific research studies climate change, carbon cycling, and biodiversity in tropical rainforests with an additional focus on community empowerment and climate change policy. Potvin earned a B.S. and M.S. (1982) from the University of Montreal in Biology, and later earned her Ph.D. in Botany from Duke University (1985).

Research and career

Scientific contributions Potvin has published over 100 scientific journal articles and multiple book chapters. In addition to her professorship at McGill University, she is a Trottier Fellow from the Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy at McGill and holds a Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Mitigation and Tropical Forest. Potvin's research focuses on climate change and carbon cycling in the tropics with an interdisciplinary lens of socioeconomic and policy aspects of land use changes.

Initiatives in Panama Potvin has been working in the rainforests and with indigenous communities of Panama since 1993. She has paved the way for more collaborative scientist-indigenous community partnerships to promote land conservation, resilient livelihoods, and preservation of cultural traditions. Through co-developing methods for sustainable forest management and carbon storage measurement with the community, her work has helped the Ipeti-Embera continue their traditional house-building using palm, traditional instrument making, and cultural body painting. Her environmental protection work in Panama has been recognized as exemplary contributions by the Ministry of the Environment of Panama. Their most recent report was sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources Canada which proposed 10 policy orientations to achieve 100% low-carbon electricity by 2035. She has published in the areas of tropical forest ecology, global change biology, biostatistics, and forest management. Her most cited works are listed below:

Potvin, C., Lechowicz, M. J., & Tardif, S. (1990). The statistical analysis of ecophysiological response curves obtained from experiments involving repeated measures. Ecology, 71(4), 1389-1400.

Potvin, C., & Roff, D. A. (1993). Distribution-free and robust statistical methods: viable alternatives to parametric statistics. Ecology, 74(6), 1617-1628.

Wilsey, B. J., & Potvin, C. (2000). Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: importance of species evenness in an old field. Ecology, 81(4), 887-892.

Kirby, K. R., & Potvin, C. (2007). Variation in carbon storage among tree species: implications for the management of a small-scale carbon sink project. Forest Ecology and Management, 246(2-3), 208-221.

Awards and honors

2021: Awarded Sir John William Dawson Medal of the Royal Society of Canada for 'important and sustained contributions to interdisciplinary research'

2018: Invited to be a member of Minister McKenna's Independent Working Group for Parks Canada to "review Parks Canada decision-making processes and make recommendations to ensure that maintaining ecological and commemorative integrity are priority considerations in decision-making".

2016: Fellow of Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

2015: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

2014: Awarded the "Bold Vision" for Canada by the Canadian Women's Foundation which selects 23 women for their renowned work in diverse fields of politics, business, culture and sciences.

2014: Recipient of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, titled Climate Change Mitigation and Tropical Forests, which is "one of Canada's most prestigious research programs is attracting innovative and talented minds to Canada".

2013-2015: Trottier Fellow of the Trottier Institute for Science and Public Policy (TISPP) at McGill University.

2012: Awarded the Miroslaw Romanowski Medal by the Royal Society of Canada.

2016: Radio-Canada—Catherine Potvin, the tropical biologist expert in climate change.

2014: Montreal Gazette—Protests aim to bring attention to need to act on climate change.