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March 4, 2026

Teaching mathematical statistics: one lecturer’s way of testing what students understand

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Michael Johan von Maltitz, Associate Professor, Mathematical Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of the Free State

It’s getting tougher to assess how much university students have learnt. In his work as a Mathematical Statistics lecturer, Michael von Maltitz has tried a new way of getting students to learn, and of assessing what they’ve absorbed and retained. Students have to show and discuss how they arrived at their understanding of the subject. They can’t just rely on cramming, because he interviews them as if they were applying for a job.

What prompted you to try something new?

“We understand, but how will it be asked in the test?” This is the question that was posed to me time and again in 2019 when I started lecturing a module in mathematical statistics at second-year university level.

I knew I had to make a change. I already understood that students were stressed, prone to memorising content and cramming before tests and examinations, and using short cuts to attain a good grade, rather than to learn anything.

What did you then do differently?

The module was unfamiliar to me so I decided to allow the students to approach the course content in the same way as I was: gathering information from different sources and combining and collating it digitally, reflecting on how it helped to meet certain objectives or learning outcomes.

These portfolios of learning evidence would contain course and outcome information, content knowledge (including theorems and proofs), examples with solutions, showpiece assignments, links to and discussions on online tutorials or videos, and paragraphs of self-reflection. Readers might see these portfolios as “study notes on steroids”.

Assessing the portfolio would be an exercise in evaluating the learning process, rather than a memorised product.

The process was challenging but offered a reward for me and my students – that of discovery. Students seemed to be genuinely learning.

Besides checking their portfolios, I needed a way to assess progress that didn’t fall into the old habits of memorisation and “teaching to the test”. I needed to ensure that a student had created their own portfolio and could defend the content in it. And I needed an assessment method that would not take more time and effort than coming up with a unique written test or examination, formulating a typeset memorandum, and marking more than 100 answer scripts, giving feedback that the students might never look at.

I decided to test this form of deep learning using a workplace method – the interview. In a 30-minute online interview with each student, I asked questions about their understanding of the module content, as well as questions concerning their own portfolios. Each student had to defend the information collected and reflected upon.

The interview worked perfectly when paired with the portfolio. I assessed a set of portfolios in an evening, gave typed feedback, and then interviewed those portfolios’ creators the next day. Feedback was immediate, and the interview assessment became a learning experience, for me and the student.

They were able to defend their portfolios if I made any errors on the portfolio assessment, and I could give the correct answer immediately to any interview question they were stumped by.

Afterwards, the recording of the interview could be given to the student, and if they felt I was being unfair at all, they could compare their interview with another student’s. In doing so, the students themselves could moderate my assessment practice.

What results did you observe?

After a year or two of teaching and assessing like this, I noticed my students seemed to understand more of the content. They retained more into their final year, they were fluent in “statistics” communication and they had better time management and self-reflection skills.

Students told me that they were asked the same questions in their first job interviews as I had asked in my modules, and that they felt much more at ease in those first few job interviews.

How did you confirm these results?

To formally test the developments I had noticed in my students, I conducted research on the class in 2022, which was published in conference proceedings and an article.

This study showed that students experienced significant learning in every facet of an educational framework known as Fink’s taxonomy:

foundational knowledge
application and communication
integration of content into other areas
self-reflection
interest
learning how to learn.

Thus, the method of learning and assessment could formally be called a success within Statistics.

Can this approach be used in other courses?

Yes. One might argue that if this method can be employed for a mathematical module, it can be utilised anywhere. Mathematical modules contain theorems, proofs, definitions, theoretical and practical problem solving – items that might seem difficult to assess through verbal communication. But it is the understanding of the ideas behind the theorems, the stories of and the tricks used within the proofs, the application of the theoretical problems, that are so important in an age where your favourite AI can provide content knowledge.

Mathematical proofs and worked calculations, both of which take time in practice, can be assessed by looking at a portfolio containing these items with the student’s annotations and reflections. The understandings of these concepts are assessed in the interview.

Likewise, in other subjects, a portfolio could be used for assessing knowledge-based content, while the interview could be used to gauge a student’s understanding of what was put into the portfolio, why they chose that content, why the content is important, and how that content is used in practice.

Michael Johan von Maltitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Teaching mathematical statistics: one lecturer’s way of testing what students understand – https://theconversation.com/teaching-mathematical-statistics-one-lecturers-way-of-testing-what-students-understand-275501

March 4, 2026

Colonialism in Africa: archaeology offers a deeper view

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Timothy Clack, Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow, University of Oxford

Map of Africa (1722). Original from The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel Wikipedia Commons, CC BY

Colonialism has been a central part of history around the world, differing only in form over time and space. After all, whenever people have moved from one place to another, they have colonised spaces and other people or forms of life.

In Africa, colonialism has mostly been studied as something imposed from outside, for example from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. A recent special issue of the journal Azania sought to address this. Scholars looked at the topic from an angle that’s so far been neglected – the archaeology and history of colonialism from within Africa.

We introduced the journal issue with an essay revisiting basic ideas, reviewing literature and presenting new case studies.

We note, for example, that colonialism has a deep and complex history. There have been different kinds and degrees of colonialism. These range from expansion, trade, exchange and sharing cultural practices to settlement, domination, exploitation, control and imperialism.

These developments have taken place in a myriad of different settings. From Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Classical Greece and Rome, and China, to multiple locations in the Americas, including the Inka and the Aztecs, and Europeans, especially after 1492.

Global and local factors shape distinctive patterns of power, subjugation, consumption, extraction, exploitation and cultural exchange through time.

Important questions emerge when this is recognised. Examples include:

what historical justice looks like
which episodes get remembered and forgotten
which victims are ignored or compensated
which colonisers face consequence.

Colonialism from outside

In the 19th and 20th centuries, during the the so-called “Scramble for Africa”, seven European countries colonised almost the whole of the continent. The signatures left behind by Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain were wide and varied. They included:

drawing national boundaries
infrastructure geared towards extraction (like megaports, railways and roads)
administration (like bicameral governments, courts and churches)
defence (military structures and installations).

European colonialism even shaped the way most of us perceive the world via the instruments used to map time and space.

Earlier, large parts of Africa were colonised by Ottoman and Arab empires. Oman, for example, colonised the Swahili coast in the 18th and 19th centuries across a territory extending from areas of Somalia through to Madagascar.

Parts of Africa which had previously been under Islamic rule, in turn, experienced European colonialism differently. This had long-term implications for education, health and economic growth.

Taken together, these legacies, over time, developed into global organising principles for imagining Africa.

But this formulation ignores African agency and political processes. It is often forgotten, for example, that the Almoravids, a dynasty which rose to power in southern Morocco during the 11th century, exerted control over European soil. Africans have been colonisers too.

Colonialism from within

Africa has also experienced diverse colonial episodes from within. Examples include empires such as Egypt and Kush in north Africa, and Dahomey and Songhai in west Africa.

Rulers of these empires sought to annex territories, establish settlements, subjugate others, control resources and impose laws and customs. The archaeological indications of these can be seen in a number of ways. They include new settlement types, changes in material culture and the adoption of new languages and religions, particularly Islam and Christianity.

Resistance to colonialism is also visible in the historical record and expressed in many ways. This included insurgencies, protests and propaganda as well as myth, art, music, literature and non-cooperation.

In the 19th century, Shaka, for example, transformed a small Zulu chieftainship in southern Africa into an aggressive and successful state that absorbed neighbouring groups. The aftershock of the Zulu expansion was the Mfecane. This was a process that saw leaders establish their own polities. Soshangane, for instance, was a Ndwandwe general defeated by Shaka who established the Gaza state in contemporary Mozambique. It incorporated in it both Shona and Tsonga people.

Another example comes from the Mursi of south-western Ethiopia. They undertook several large-scale migrations over the past 200-300 years. This movement became part of their group identity. They displaced, assimilated and dominated other populations. The material traces they left have been explored by archaeological research. This has helped to interpret their activities, and also challenges their oral histories.

Cultural exchange and innovation

Colonialism is a generative process, with innovation emerging from cultural contact, relationships between colonisers and colonised, and material exchange.

Colonial processes have multi-directional influence. European colonialism, for example, shaped how Europeans dealt with the rest of the world. And, in turn, it contributed to how the western world was constructed. Ideas and materials flowed into the metropolitan centres of Europe as much as from them. In certain respects, Britain was colonised through contact with, for example, Africa, Australasia and North America, as much as those areas were colonial creations.

Colonialism often creates victims and oppressors. But it is also about consumption, innovation and exchange.

Archaeology offers a useful way to study colonialism because it leaves material and intangible indicators which the discipline has methods to interpret.

There is a need for more work on the processes and character of colonialism within Africa. This will enable comparisons and understanding, and correct a skewed picture of world history. A richer understanding of colonialism, including neocolonialism, may also inform debates about its legacy, and about decolonisation and restitution.

Timothy Clack receives research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), British Academy, British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), Christensen Fund, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Royal Anthropological Institute, and University of Oxford.

Shadreck Chirikure receives funding from the British Academy, UKRI, the University of Oxford, the University of Cape Town, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, and the Royal Society.

– ref. Colonialism in Africa: archaeology offers a deeper view – https://theconversation.com/colonialism-in-africa-archaeology-offers-a-deeper-view-275495

March 4, 2026

Iran war fallout for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa: political analyst weighs up the risks

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Federico Donelli, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Trieste

The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in March 2026 marks the end of a political era in the Middle Eastern country. Khamenei was killed in US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s capital, Tehran. This has triggered a war drawing in numerous countries across the Middle East.

The Horn of Africa and Red Sea regions, which link Africa and the Middle East, share a dense web of military, political and economic interactions that enable crises on one shore to quickly affect the other. Here, Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti sit along one of the world’s most important trade and geopolitical corridors.

But the consequences of Khamenei’s death may be less dramatic than many expect. This is because power in Iran is dispersed across entrenched institutions and security elites who are capable of preserving regime continuity.

The Horn of Africa and the Red Sea

Iran is no stranger to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. During the 1990s and 2000s, Tehran established security and economic ties with several countries, notably Sudan, to gain a foothold along the Red Sea.

Iran’s influence waned, however, during the 2010s as Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, increased their diplomatic, financial and military presence.

As a political scientist studying Middle Eastern and African security, I have followed Iran’s regional engagement for years. From my perspective, events in Iran and the Gulf matter to African countries because conflicts, arms flows and rivalries can easily spill across shores in a single strategic region.

Three intertwined dynamics shape how Khamenei’s death affects the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

Firstly, Tehran’s influence here has declined over the past decade. This is with the exception of Yemen, where Iran supports the Houthi movement, which has previously attacked Israeli-linked vessels.

Secondly, the way this latest conflict was triggered and has escalated may be more important than a change in Iranian leadership. It could contribute to a broader erosion of moderation.

Thirdly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s powerful military force – is set to play a pivotal role in the post-Khamenei transition.

This is significant for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Iran’s engagement here has largely relied on unconventional methods. Naval manoeuvres are an example, such as the long-term deployment in the Red Sea of the Iranian vessel Saviz, which has served as a logistical and intelligence platform. The country has also deployed military advisers and established arms networks to transport Iranian weapons.

Any future leadership closely aligned with the IRGC is likely to keep using these low-cost tools.

In this sense, continuity will likely prevail over rupture. Iran’s ambitions are filtered through a sober assessment of constraints that the ongoing war may entrench.

Iran’s shifting priorities

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has considered itself a middle power with legitimate claims to regional pre-eminence. The Red Sea and the Horn of Africa gradually became part of Iran’s expanded strategic geography.

Following the consolidation of the regime promoted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei – who took over in 1989 after his predecessor’s death – progressively translated Iran’s ambition into strategic depth.

This aimed to extend Iran’s security perimeter beyond its borders through alliances, proxies and low-cost commitments.

In the 2000s, Iran cultivated close ties with Sudan and Eritrea.

It established naval access points in the two countries and used soft power tools, such as development aid and religious networks. It considered the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is between Yemen and Djibouti, vital for countering Saudi and Israeli influence and maintaining alternative trade routes.

The limitations of this expansion became apparent, however.

Iran’s ambitions soon came up against reality. The country’s economy was weakened by sanctions linked to its nuclear programme and US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, political power remained fragmented across competing institutions. Domestic pressures, including economic hardship and periodic protest movements, were mounting. Instability in neighbouring states such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen made long-term regional power projection costly and uncertain.

After 2015, Saudi Arabia increased its engagement in the Horn of Africa through financial aid, diplomatic pressure and military cooperation linked to the war in Yemen.

Seeking logistical support along the Red Sea and aiming to counter Iran’s influence near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, Saudi Arabia strengthened its ties with regional governments. This prompted Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea to sever or scale back their relations with Tehran. They effectively aligned themselves with Saudi Arabia and its allies. Iran redirected resources to higher-priority theatres of war, such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

For a decade, therefore, Tehran’s presence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea has become more selective and opportunistic. Iran has relied on indirect leverage there, such as Houthi operations, rather than direct expansion.

Khamenei’s death is likely to reinforce rather than reverse the trend. In fact, the outcome of the current war and the start of a delicate succession process could prompt an even more cautious approach abroad.

Worsening fragility

Although a change in Iranian leadership may not alter the approach to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, the dynamics that led to the recent conflict may have an impact on the region.

The scale and visibility of the Israeli-US attack – and Iran’s direct retaliation – signal something deeper: the erosion of thresholds in the use of force.

Iran is not buying time and avoiding direct confrontation while limiting the manoeuvre room of its rivals.

This could usher in a period of “anything goes”.

Regional actors, from Gulf states to local governments, are likely to feel increasingly justified in bypassing established security norms. The Red Sea has already become a crowded arena. External powers are projecting their strength. Local states are exploiting competition among them. The reshuffling of forces triggered by the war in Iran will have repercussions throughout the region.

In such a context, characterised by multiple hierarchies, even a reduction of Iranian capabilities could have knock-on effects.

The region’s fragility – as seen in civil war in Sudan, tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, instability in Somalia and the heavy presence of military bases along maritime routes – amplifies these risks.

In other words, the question is not whether Iran will suddenly expand into east Africa. It is whether the regional climate will shift towards fewer restrictions and greater acceptance of coercive tools.

If escalation becomes normalised in the heart of the Middle East – the region’s most interconnected theatre – the fallout could be felt in places like the Horn of Africa.

Uncertainty in the short term

Khamenei’s death is likely to generate uncertainty in the short term at the regional level, but will lead to continuity in the long term.

Over time, Tehran has adopted what can be termed a “realist defence” doctrine – deterrence through a strong indirect presence, but at reduced cost and risk.

Iran’s view of international politics as a zero-sum game – where one actor’s gain is another’s loss – and its desire to reduce the influence of its rivals are not merely the result of personal legacies. Rather, they are deeply rooted in the country’s identity.

For the Horn of Africa, this means that Tehran is likely to remain a secondary but persistent player: active enough to hinder its rivals’ strategies, yet restrained enough to avoid major commitments.

Federico Donelli is affiliated with the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), and the Orion Policy Institute (OPI).

– ref. Iran war fallout for the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa: political analyst weighs up the risks – https://theconversation.com/iran-war-fallout-for-the-red-sea-and-the-horn-of-africa-political-analyst-weighs-up-the-risks-277512

March 4, 2026

‘AI will be the end of us’ – is Colm Tóibín right about the threat to creative writing?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Benn, Associate Professor in Crime Writing (Creative Writing), University of East Anglia

In 1950, William Faulkner delivered a famous acceptance speech for the Nobel prize in literature in which he rallied for the “inexhaustible [human] voice” and his belief in its supremacy – not merely to endure but to prevail. Faulkner reasoned this was because the human voice, transmuted into art, possesses soul – a soul capable of compassion and sacrifice.

Fast forward 75 years. Irish writer Colm Tóibín is asked about AI’s impact on writers in a newspaper interview. His wry response: “AI will be the end of us.”

Tóibín seems to believe that the triumphant human voice, one which writers and artists often cling to, will neither endure nor prevail. At least, not over the disruptive, transformative technology of Generative AI. He continued:

This idea [that] no machine could ever replace my sensibility, which is so rich, varied, complex, and arising from experience and from history – that’s all rubbish. You can actually manufacture that. And the more material they put into the machines, the more the machines will just learn about what sentences sound like, what rhythm is like. And the novelist can go and do something more useful.

Equally pertinent and pessimistic are the final pages of the late Cormac McCarthy’s penultimate novel, The Passenger. The great American writer had spent the last decades of his life studying complex adaptive systems at the Santa Fe Institute, writing: “In the end, there will be nothing that cannot be simulated. And this will be the final abridgement of privilege. This is the world to come. Not some other.”

Art versus algorithm

What to do with such doomsaying? What can novelists and creative writing students say in our paltry human voices that won’t simply be co-opted for training data?

Well, it’s worth noting some hard truths first. Generative AI and proprietary large language models (LLMs) are not neutral tools to be either ethically harnessed or maliciously abused. They are predictive matrices, data harvesters and plagiarism remixers, designed to collate and privatise human knowledge and activity to maximise corporate interests over social needs.

We should consider both the ideological and environmental implications for AI. As institutions default to these technologies, AI becomes a shiny symbol that accelerates the drive to value creative writing only as a measurable professional output. AI adoption may signal competitive productivity, efficiency and innovation, while actually deskilling and disempowering the majority of creative writers.

This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

AI’s vast computational infrastructure requires ever more data centres, processing units, cloud networks, water consumption, and rare earth element mining and export. This is so planet-wrecking in its resource intensity, it is already probably irreconcilable with present climate goals.

Nevertheless, “the world to come” is already here. AI is swiftly becoming our status quo. As a creative writer’s tool, it can serve as a shortcut, eliminating the need to take the traditional toilful journey of conflicting desire in which the writer writes to both better understand and be better understood.

There might now be little effort or intentionality for the writer beyond inputting a prompt. That misses the point of what authors do and why. Perhaps AI-free creative writing composition will become an artisan commodity. The publisher Faber has already placed “Human Written” stamps on the cover of author Sarah Hall’s latest novel.

But AI will continue to affect writers, existentially and economically, as it disrupts the creative industries and beyond. Last year, novelist and GenAI researcher Clementine Collett published her sobering author and publisher survey, in which respondents reported increasing anxiety, grievance and loss of income.

There is small comfort in the fact that, as long as there are people around, there will always be some human and market interest in beautiful and provocative things that have been created solely by other people.

We can care more deeply about a thing because of what we feel we know of its creator, and what they might have endured and sacrificed to create it. Often this is what imbues art with its real meaning and value. How can it be truly meaningful or valuable if its creation has not cost its creator something?

Our desire for and engagement with any creative work is often at an uncanny remove from the thing itself. It is partially rooted in the relational – all the surrounding elements that influence how we encounter and interpret the creative work. This framing constructs a story around it that can also manipulate our desires.

What a shame that capitalism knows this. For this is not just how it eternally sells us stuff, it is now how its technology gets us to concede its claim on our endeavours – stealing, recomposing and hallucinating them for our convenience. And while AI is unlikely to exhaust what Faulkner called the “inexhaustible [human] voice”, it may drown it out under its own artificial echo.

Let’s say Tóibín and McCarthy are right: all our past and future creative labour will be stolen, simulated and commodified without friction. Nonetheless, creative writing, outside of markets and databanks, remains a stubbornly human essential.

As a successful species of emotional primates hardwired for both aggression and collaboration, we still seek to relate, exchange and communicate honestly with ourselves through the creative struggle. Personal artistic creation and its reception by others can alter our moral trajectories, expand consciousness, challenge, comfort and disturb. This is partly because writing is an act, not just a product.

As Faulkner suggested in his Nobel speech, it is the creative act of writing which demonstrates “the human heart in conflict with itself”. This is why it is dangerous. This is why trillions of dollars will soon be invested in making readers and writers forget this. It’s critical that we don’t forget.

Tom Benn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘AI will be the end of us’ – is Colm Tóibín right about the threat to creative writing? – https://theconversation.com/ai-will-be-the-end-of-us-is-colm-toibin-right-about-the-threat-to-creative-writing-275898

March 4, 2026

How one massive gas field shapes the global stakes of conflict in the Middle East

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Ireland, Senior Lecturer in Energy Geoscience, Newcastle University

The Zagros mountain range in southern Iran sits on the edge of the Arabian tectonic plate. L_B_Photography/Shutterstock

The Middle East plays a central role in global energy and therefore global markets. As tensions escalate and the strait of Hormuz, a key trade route, faces disruption, headlines assessing the wider impact of the Iranian conflict often centre on oil and gas supply.

There’s one underlying reason that so many oil tankers and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes pass through the strait, and that Middle East conflict shakes global energy markets. That reason is a geological one: an extraordinary concentration of oil and gas accumulations.

As the deadly Ukraine conflict showed in 2022, a predominance of supply from one region can, justifiably, ignite concerns over supply disruption. So much of the world’s oil and gas supply is clustered in one region. This helps explain today’s volatility.

The Middle East is responsible for some 30% of global oil production and 17% of global natural gas production. The revenues from this vast scale of production underpin the economies of many Middle Eastern countries and provides important energy supplies around the world. Incredibly all this oil and gas is found within a single minor tectonic plate – the Arabian plate.

This plate covers more than 1 million square miles and hosts 55% of the world’s proven oil reserves and 40% of the natural gas. The region also hosts a disproportionate number of giant and supergiant fields. Giant oil and gas fields are those with more than 500 millions of barrels of oil equivalent; supergiant are those with more than 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The Arabian plate is bounded by the Red Sea, the Zagros mountains, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Arabian plate separated from the African plate about 25 million years ago. As the Arabian plate shifted northwards, it collided with the Eurasian plate. This resulted in the formation of the Zagros mountains.

The Arabian plate hosts a quarter of all the world’s giant and supergiant fields. Historically, more than 500 commercial fields have been found here. Current production today accounts for roughly a third of global output.

In Iran, commercial production began in 1908 when oil was discovered just over 50 miles north-east of the city of Ahvaz in western Iran. That oil field is known as Masjed Soleyman. This discovery triggered a century of foreign involvement and political attention.

Development of Iran’s oil and gas resources has changed at each of the previous turning points in its political history, notably the Iranian revolution of 1979 which sent oil prices upwards. Today, Iran hosts hundreds of fields, both onshore and offshore, notably including its share of the world’s largest gas field — South Pars/North Dome field, which is shared with Qatar.

A shared super-giant field

The South Pars/North Dome field highlights the geopolitical complexity of energy supply. Geologically, South Pars/North Dome is a single structure. Politically, it is divided by a maritime boundary. South Pars lies in Iranian waters; North Dome (also referred to as North Field) lies in Qatari waters.

The field was first discovered in Qatari waters in 1971, with its northern extent confirmed by Iran two decades later. The gas here is found in a series of reservoir rocks known as the Khuff formation. These rocks are porous and permeable and are between 200 and 300 million years old – formed during the Permian and Triassic periods. They are found extensively across the Arabian plate. These rocks lie almost two miles beneath the seafloor.

The development of this gas field transformed Qatar into the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Until the recent strikes, North Dome, operated by QatarEnergy, the world’s largest producer of LNG, was producing approximately 18.5 billion cubic feet per day. This enables Qatar to process and supply around one-fifth of the world’s LNG.

This extraordinary share has resulted in oil and gas accounting for around 80% of Qatar’s government revenues. On the Iranian side, daily production at South Pars, operated by Petropars, (a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company) is estimated at around 2 billion cubic feet per day.

Over the past 25 years, Iran’s gas output has increased fivefold. Much of this growth has been driven by extensive drilling to increase production across South Pars. Key importers of Iranian gas, by pipeline, are Turkey and Iraq. The National Iranian Oil Company has started developing it’s own LNG facility to try to meet growing global demand, but this is yet to be complete.

While LNG accounts for only about 8% of global gas supplies, it is a crucial marginal source of energy in most countries, except those where electricity supply is dominated by hydropower or nuclear.

The gas price rise of the last week still pale into insignificance compared with those that were ultimately seen as a result of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, although it remains to be seen how this will play out in the longer term.

As tensions escalate and energy infrastructure comes under threat, the consequences are already reverberating globally. Disruptions to production in a region that supplies such a large share of the world’s energy inevitably affect short-term prices, longer-term investment and political decision-making far beyond the Middle East.

The distribution of oil and gas resources has shaped political relationships, global investment and regional conflicts. Even as the world moves to reduce it’s reliance on oil and gas, the geological concentration in the Middle East ensures that energy security will remain closely tied to the politics of the region for decades to come.

Mark Ireland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How one massive gas field shapes the global stakes of conflict in the Middle East – https://theconversation.com/how-one-massive-gas-field-shapes-the-global-stakes-of-conflict-in-the-middle-east-277439

March 4, 2026

Banning social media for under-16s won’t fix the real problem – the business model of these platforms is dangerous for all of us

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tony D Sampson, Reader in Digital Communication, University of Essex

Against rising adult concern about child sexual abuse content and children’s mental health, recent calls to follow Australia and ban under-16s from accessing social media in the UK are understandable. It reflects genuine parental anxiety about online harms.

These harms are not abstract. Research shows that young people are exposed to violent misogynistic cultures and toxic manospheres online.

But despite being consistently critical of the viral and experiential platform business models driving much of today’s social media harm, as an expert in digital communication, I do not support the ban. This is not because I defend the kind of libertarian politics adopted by Silicon Valley.

It isn’t because I consider social media harmless either. The situation is more nuanced. I oppose the ban because it is based on questionable assumptions about under-16s’ vulnerability to social media and overlooks the broader harms platform business models present to all users.

What’s needed is a hardline regime of regulation and education across all age ranges.

I challenge the pro-ban debate because it too often rests on a crude and narrow adult perception of young online experiences. This often overstates media effects on attention and other brain functions. It also crucially underestimates the significance of learning about wider digital cultures in the everyday social, political, creative and emotional experiences of young people.

More profound issues persist in the business models that structure digital experiences. There is little doubt that doomscrolling has negative psychological effects, as many users discovered during the COVID pandemic.

As an invention of the attention economy, endless feeds are not accidental: they are shaped by design choices that keep users scrolling long past the point of diminishing returns. These systems are purposefully optimised for engagement metrics, not wellbeing. Platforms do not sell content; they sell scarcity of attention, optimising and farming user experiences for advertisers and data companies.

Where I am more sceptical is in claims that social media rewires young people’s brains or directly destroys attention spans. Such arguments often imply a simple cause-and-effect relationship between screens and declining cognition. Historically, anxieties about distraction long predate social media. Technology scholars point out that forms of shorter, more fragmented attention most probably preceded the deep attention required to read books.

The problem is not that under-16s are uniquely vulnerable to encounters with screens. It is that all users are navigating systems engineered to optimise distraction at scale. Attention is not disappearing. It is being captured and redirected.

Regulation, not prohibition

There is no question that under-16s face particular risks online. But banning social media will not eliminate those risks. Young people are adept at working around restrictions, whether through VPNs, shared logins or burner accounts. When a cultural practice is pushed underground, it does not disappear. It becomes more secretive, less supervised and often more socially risky.

Prohibition also tends to increase desirability. Social media does not become less tempting because it is forbidden. It becomes rebellious, status-laden and harder for parents, educators and researchers to engage with openly. Historically, prohibitionist approaches to alcohol and gambling have driven cultures of harm underground rather than eliminating them.

Girl on phone in dark bedroom — A ban may make young people’s social media use more secretive.
Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock

In the UK context, this matters. While policymakers debate bans, the same global platforms continue to operate with limited accountability, despite legislation such as the Online Safety Act. Silicon Valley companies have become too powerful to self-regulate and increasingly unwilling to act in the public interest. Decades of government-backed deregulation (or re-regulation) driven by digitisation have left platforms with unprecedented reach and minimal responsibility.

This situation is not sustainable.

Social media is a media industry, no different in principle from film, television, radio or newspapers. Yet it has grown with almost no editorial responsibility or enforceable public standards. Leaning on automated filters or AI moderation does not remove harmful content at source.

The answer is not prohibition, but stringent regulation: clearer rules, enforced transparency, content governance and meaningful oversight of how algorithms function. A ban avoids the hard questions. Regulation forces us to confront them, including how recommendation systems shape experience, and whose interests those systems ultimately serve.

Why media literacy matters

Media studies is often derided as a shallow subject lacking rigour, but digital media literacy is now essential. Understanding how algorithms work is crucial for grasping how attention is farmed, manipulated and sold.

Social media is not only informational but emotional. Platforms trade heavily in outrage, affirmation, anxiety and belonging. Media literacy must therefore go beyond recognising misinformation, fact-checking or managing screen time. It must involve an “education of the senses”. In this case, learning how to discern between commodified emotional experiences and what constitutes a genuinely flourishing online life.

This is not about teaching young people to simply resist platforms. It is about equipping them with conceptual tools to recognise how digital experiences are designed, how their feelings are being engaged, and how their attention is being steered.

If the UK government is serious about protecting young people online, it needs to regulate social media as the powerful media industry it is. It needs to educate users about how their emotional experiences are extracted and commodified. That approach is slower and more politically demanding. But it addresses the problem at its source.

Tony D Sampson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Banning social media for under-16s won’t fix the real problem – the business model of these platforms is dangerous for all of us – https://theconversation.com/banning-social-media-for-under-16s-wont-fix-the-real-problem-the-business-model-of-these-platforms-is-dangerous-for-all-of-us-275602

March 4, 2026

How building with people who face barriers benefits everyone, especially during crises

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jutta Treviranus, Director & Professor, Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University

Imagine approaching a curb in a wheelchair. The step is only a few inches, but for some of us, it might as well be a wall. Now imagine that wall turned into a slope. With that single design change, movement becomes possible again.

But more than that, others start to benefit too — a parent pushing a stroller, a traveller rolling luggage, a worker with a handcart.

A simple but liberating modification, made to include those once excluded, ends up changing everyone’s experience for the better. In my field of inclusive design, this innovative magic became known as “the curb-cut effect.”

Curb-cut thinking has inspired countless inventive leaps, including the creation of the typewriter, emails, text-to-speech, voice recognition, captions and image recognition — to name just a few. All were initially motivated by the desire to address a barrier experienced by someone who was excluded by the existing design, resulting in advances that benefit many more.

Ultimately, building the world this way affords us more adaptive choices when unexpected situations arise. But inclusive design does not mean designing for disabled people, which is a paternalistic view that positions them as passive recipients of benevolent accommodation. It means designing with them.

Scaling the curb-cut principle

This phenomenon is more than a clever design trick to build new products and increase the customer base. As our society becomes less stable, I can’t help but think about the macro curb-cut effect and applying the same phenomena to complex societal systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that when our systems are designed with people who are struggling, they work better for everyone when we all find ourselves struggling.

I saw this as a reality at OCAD university where I teach. Ten years before the onset of the pandemic, the Inclusive Design program was co-designed with students who face barriers to university education. This included students who had jobs, care responsibilities, couldn’t afford to live in Toronto or experienced accessibility barriers due to disabilities.

The program gave students the choice to attend in person, online or asynchronously. All curriculum materials were provided in accessible formats. Most importantly, each new cohort began by building a cohesive learning community with collective responsibility for the success of their peers.

Self-determination was emphasized, balanced by mechanisms to exchange compassionate, constructive feedback with fellow students.

While the education sector struggled to adjust to the disruptive reality of the pandemic, our program required no such adjustment. The necessary tools, processes, mindsets and social support structures were already in place.

Diversity as an adaptive advantage

Global thought leaders stress that we are in a period of escalating global risks. Living on this planet is a precarious balancing act, and we have entered a period of disequilibrium. This entangled disequilibrium is affecting all domains of our existence.

And those who seek influence and control exploit the resulting existential fear and promote the eugenicist fallacy, or a “survival of the fittest” mentality.

Eugenicists and social Darwinists believe that society is strengthened by eliminating those who are deemed less fit. They believe that “survival of the fittest” is, in fact, the engine of evolutionary advances and the key to the continuation of the human race. They argue that a monoculture of perfect beings provides security and strength.

But evolutionary scholars such as Terrence W. Deacon have shown that human advances, like the development of language, are made possible during periods of relaxed selection, when diversity can thrive. It is systems designed to support diversity that offer adaptive choices in times of crisis, leading to greater societal resilience.

Monocultures, on the other hand, can be felled by a single blow.

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Prof. Kate Pickett showed that inequality is correlated with all other societal ills. Economist Thomas Piketty extended the argument to economic stability, arguing that unless economic inequality is addressed the whole democratic order will be threatened.

As an antidote, social scientist Scott E. Page showed how making room for diverse needs, and thereby diverse perspectives, within an organization helps to navigate complexity.

The cultural bias toward efficiency

But we are culturally primed to reject a curb-cut approach.

The industrial era, our capitalist ideology and our reliance on statistical reasoning to predict and determine truth have instilled a less dramatic form of eugenicist reasoning in our assumptions and conventions.

The industrial era demanded replaceable workers, this required standardized learners from our systems of education. The competitive market culture soon learned to value quick wins, efficiency and speed.

Business gurus such as Richard Koch interpret Pareto’s 80/20 principle to mean that we should focus on the homogeneous 80 per cent that take 20 per cent of the effort and ignore the difficult heterogeneous 20 per cent. But it is the marginalized 20 per cent that motivate imaginative leaps and are the first to recognize the signals of emerging risks, not the complacent average consumer.

These priorities are now amplified, accelerated and automated by artificial intelligence (AI). AI is powered by statistical reasoning, and unless deliberately corrected, it privileges what is common and puts aside what is less so.

A culture with statistical bias toward the average then discourages curb-cut thinking.

The limits of majority rule

Perversely, reactions to defend progressive values can also discourage the curb-cut approach. In defending science and evidence, it has been reduced to what is true for the statistical average.

This denies the truth for statistical outliers. Statistically-determined conclusions only hold for the average person and are wrong for or inaccurate about people far from the average.

Democracy is similarly defended by reducing it to “one person, one vote” and majority rule, neglecting human rights. This inadvertently favours the trivial needs of the majority over the critical needs of minorities.

Inclusive design is often misunderstood as remembering to consider people with disabilities. It is more radical than that. Engaging people who face the greatest barriers to design our systems with us will provide everyone with adaptive choices during the next inevitable crisis.

Jutta Treviranus is the director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre. She receives funding from Accessibility Standards Canada, the New Frontiers Research Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

– ref. How building with people who face barriers benefits everyone, especially during crises – https://theconversation.com/how-building-with-people-who-face-barriers-benefits-everyone-especially-during-crises-274279

March 4, 2026

Will AI drones, robots and wearable sensors revolutionize workplace safety?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Atieh Razavi Yekta, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of British Columbia

Around 60 per cent of Canadian employees can expect their job to be transformed through artificial intelligence (AI). For many, AI will complement, rather than replace, their work. For some, it could prevent illness, injury or death.

This might look like a nurse wearing a T-shirt equipped with sensors to track her lower back posture during a hospital shift. It might be an algorithm monitoring noise levels in a steel factory, to prevent worker hearing loss. Or it could be a robotic glove that helps workers avoid repetitive strain injury on an assembly line.

High-risk sectors such as construction, oil and gas, mining and heavy manufacturing may have the most to gain. Workers experience large numbers of serious injuries in these sectors, despite decades of safety regulations. Falls, equipment accidents, repetitive strain and exposure to environmental and psycho-social hazards are risks of the job.

Globally, there at least 60,000 fatal accidents on construction sites each year. In British Columbia alone, the construction industry reported more than 15,200 serious injury claims between 2015 and 2024.

AI systems — such as machine learning and large language models — can go far beyond traditional occupational health and safety practices such as inspections, training and audits. They can adapt to changing conditions, continuously monitor risks and provide real-time decision support, helping anticipate and prevent accidents before they occur.

These technologies also bring risks — to psychological health, privacy and worker rights. Canada and other nations need to develop robust governance frameworks, to ensure worker safety and well-being.

Smart helmets, boots, wrist sensors

Among the most visible applications of AI in occupational health and safety are commercial wearables and smart personal protective equipment. These include smart helmets, boots, belts, biometric garments and wrist sensors. They collect data on posture, movement, heart rate, temperature, vibration, noise and location. Connected platforms analyze these patterns in real time.

On construction sites, wearables can detect fatigue and risk of falls. For example, companies manufacture fall-protection equipment such as smart harnesses with sensing carabiners. These can be integrated with digital monitoring platforms to track worker positioning, anchorage use and fall events. They generate immediate alerts to support on-site safety decisions.

Wearables can also monitor repetitive strain and alert workers to heat stress or toxic exposure. They can warn when workers enter hazardous zones. Continuous monitoring can allow for earlier ergonomic intervention, and may even help prevent musculoskeletal disorders. For aging workers, early detection and targeted adjustments can extend careers and reduce disability risk.

At the same time, research on the combined effects of aging and workplace technologies shows that AI, robotics and automation can increase job insecurity and the risk of job loss for older workers, particularly when retraining and upskilling opportunities are limited.

Drones and robots inspect demolition sites

Beyond wearables, AI-driven drones and robotic systems are enhancing inspection and maintenance in confined or unstable environments. They can enter tunnels, bridges, demolition sites, highway corridors, mines and nuclear sites, reducing human exposure to danger.

For example, research shows that sensory-enhanced tele-operation of compact demolition robots can improve both safety and accessibility in high-risk interior sites. Operators rely on multiple sources of feedback (vision, sound and vibration) to detect hazards such as falling debris, unstable floors and blind spots.

AI-enabled drones and robotic systems are also used in mining and nuclear plants. In mining, robots can work in tight or unstable spaces while keeping operators safely outside. In the nuclear industry, they protect workers from radiation while dismantling structures and handling waste, reducing human exposure to extreme risks.

Predictive AI can also model long-term occupational health risks. In industrial settings, neural networks have been created to predict hearing loss among workers — for example in a steel factory. In this way, AI can identify complex hazards before they cause irreversible harm.

These tools can reduce exposure to hazards and help address labour shortages in high-risk industries. They also appeal to younger, tech-savvy workers.

Emerging risks and ethics

AI systems are not risk-free. Drones, robots and sensors sometimes malfunction in dusty, high-vibration or complex environments, creating new hazards on worksites.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety notes that AI used for worker monitoring can affect psychological health by increasing pressure, performance monitoring or a sense of constant surveillance.

Wearables and other AI-enabled technologies also raise important questions about data and privacy, bias, reliability, data protection and regulatory oversight. For example, who owns the information generated? How is it stored? Could insights derived from this data be used for discipline rather than occupational health and safety purposes?

Research also shows that workers are far more likely to accept these technologies when they understand their purpose, trust the system and are confident that data is used solely to support safety and well-being.

A critical gap in protections

Under its G7 presidency in 2025, Canada helped lead the development of a global compendium of best practices for human-centred AI in the workplace. This reinforced Canada’s role as a driving force in shaping ethical, safe, workforce-ready AI policies worldwide.

And yet in many areas, when it comes to regulating AI, Canada lags behind. Canada is, for example, the only G7 country with no digital safety regulator and no online safety legislation of any kind. As AI quietly transforms workplaces, Canada risks leaving workers’ privacy, autonomy and dignity unprotected, with the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) having never been enacted.

Without robust governance, even AI’s potential to enhance worker health and safety remains uncertain, exposing a critical gap in protections at a time of rapid technological change.

Safeguarding privacy, autonomy and dignity

In 2025, 12.2 per cent of Canadian businesses reported using AI to produce goods or deliver services, double that reported the year before. Adoption of AI in Canada is strongest in information, cultural and professional services, while agriculture, accommodation and food services lag.

As workplaces adopt AI, policymakers in Canada and globally must now focus on rules and practices that protect workers and uphold their rights. The path forward is neither to reject AI nor to adopt it uncritically. These technologies must be reliable, interoperable and designed ethically.

We need risk and impact assessments, worker consultation and governance frameworks that safeguard occupational health, privacy, autonomy and dignity.

Applied thoughtfully, with adequate regulatory frameworks in place, AI and commercial wearable technologies can prevent injuries, anticipate illness and place workers’ safety and well-being at the centre of workplace practices.

Christopher McLeod receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, WorkSafeBC, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and the British Columbia Construction Safety Alliance.

Atieh Razavi Yekta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Will AI drones, robots and wearable sensors revolutionize workplace safety? – https://theconversation.com/will-ai-drones-robots-and-wearable-sensors-revolutionize-workplace-safety-275412

March 4, 2026

Behind women’s success is a sisterhood that sustains it

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Maha Khawaja, PhD Student, Health and Society, McMaster University

Success is often seen as an individual journey. The ambitious woman’s dedication and hard work get her where she wants to be. But social psychologists suggest something different: behind many women’s achievements lies a powerful and often overlooked support system — their friendships with other women.

Overwhelmingly, research shows that female friendships have the capacity to greatly enhance nearly every domain of life, from mental well-being to quality of life. They even foster better physical health.

In childhood, these social bonds are vital to reinforce emotional resilience, build healthy coping mechanisms and strengthen communication skills. As time goes on, this steady support also buffers the negative impacts of life transitions such as breakups, caregiving, burnout and illness.

Female friendships are social and psychological infrastructure that shape health, resilience and achievement, not just a sentimental side story.

Getting through life together

These bonds can help encourage goal-setting, ambition and later success. Developmental psychologists use the self-in-relation theory to posit that women’s growth in particular is built through social connection and interaction with one another.

Solid friendships can boost self-esteem, growth and even empowerment. And if you think about it, it makes intuitive sense. Empowerment is cultivated within the communities women build and sustain together.

In university settings in high-pressure environments, for example, female friendships prove critical in maintaining a positive outlook and building a strong sense of self. They also ensure a much better experience when transitioning to university in the first place, and getting used to it.

When it comes to problem-solving, studies show women don’t always do it alone. In fact, processes of co-rumination, which involve audibly working through problems with one another, lead to better problem-solving abilities and a capacity to handle strife.

Female friendships can also function as a therapeutic mechanism, providing real-time cognitive reframing by “telling it like it is” and improving coping strategies and stress tolerance.

A network in times of crisis

When it comes to hardships such as cancer, menopause or chronic pain, women also support one another through emotional comfort, access to valuable knowledge and even help offset emotional and physical labour. For example, for women recovering from substance use disorders, evidence shows that friends empower one another to recover and attain access to resources they hold in high regard.

For women who are post-partum and new mothers, having a supportive network to help with domestic and emotional labour also proves to have profound impacts on sense of self and buffers poor mental health. Even in later life, menopause sisterhoods — supportive, often informal communities where women help each other navigate the changes of menopause together — are vital in protecting quality of life.

Biology reinforces the positive impacts of friendship and social supports through the release of oxytocin, otherwise known as the “love hormone,” which then improves overall health.

For those without an in-person village by their side, online spaces such as Reddit function as a way for women to connect with other like-minded women globally and find solidarity. For people seeking help regarding sex education, for example, and who may not have an in-person support network, these online forums function as spaces to share knowledge, alleviate anxiety and build confidence.

Having a sisterhood can also aid immensely in protecting mental health during the ups-and-downs of a romantic relationship. Even more so, female friendships can help during situations of domestic abuse by providing valuable resources, emotional comfort and ultimately strength.

The politics of collective solidarity

Though supportive social bonds are a major part of an individual’s foundation, movements like #MeToo illustrate how collective female solidarity can shift institutional power too.

They function as a top-down process that can reshape what is socially possible. Even some of the first feminist movements in North America were largely constructed through the connections formed between women and the reliance they had on one another to achieve their goals.

While the end of a friendship is certainly not easy, there is still much beauty in the relationships that are meant to exist for specific season and in the opportunity to build new ones across our lifespan.

If society is serious about advancing women’s success, it must recognize that success is rarely achieved alone. Female friendships are foundational to women’s progress.

Whether it’s a friend who lends a listening ear and brings joy through late-night conversations or one that sternly tells you when to get back up and fight, the importance of female friendships is something we should celebrate this International Women’s Day.

Maha Khawaja does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Behind women’s success is a sisterhood that sustains it – https://theconversation.com/behind-womens-success-is-a-sisterhood-that-sustains-it-276838

March 4, 2026

Warming winters are reshaping Canada’s snowpack

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ali Nazemi, Associate Professor, Building, Civil, and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University

Snow is Canada’s hidden reservoir. Each winter, the precipitation it brings is stored not behind dams, but across mountains, forests and prairies as snowpack. When temperatures rise, that stored water melts and is released gradually, sustaining rivers, groundwater, ecosystems, agriculture and hydropower.

This seasonal storage underpins water security across much of the country. Prairie agriculture depends heavily on mountain snowpack for irrigation. The Great Lakes basin relies on snowmelt to sustain spring inflows that support navigation, ecosystems and freshwater withdrawals. Hydropower systems in British Columbia and Québec depend on snow accumulation and melt timing in upland watersheds.

For decades, scientists and water managers have relied on snow water equivalent (SWE) to measure this winter water reservoir. SWE estimates how much liquid water snowpack would produce if melted instantly. It is physically intuitive and remains central to seasonal water forecasting.

But climate change is altering not only how much snow falls, but where snowpack persists and how long it lasts. Warmer winters are bringing more rain instead of snow, more frequent mid-winter melt events and shorter snow-cover duration. In many regions, peak snowpack now arrives earlier. Snow cover is becoming more intermittent, particularly during early winter and spring transitions.

These changes expose a limitation in traditional SWE measurements at large spatial scales. As temperatures rise, snow may disappear across large portions of a landscape while remaining deep in isolated patches. Under such conditions, the average snow water equivalent can appear stable even though the snow-covered area has shrunk substantially.

To address this limitation, colleagues and I have introduced a complementary metric called snow water availability (SWA). Rather than averaging snow water across an entire area, SWA estimates how much water exists within the portion of the landscape that is covered with snow. The metric combines SWE with satellite measurements or climate reanalysis estimates of the fraction of snow cover over the landscape. The result is a measure particularly sensitive to patchy snow, a condition that is becoming more common in a warmer climate.

Snow water availability

Using our SWA metric, we conduct a large-scale analysis across Canada and Alaska and have found pronounced differences in how snow water is changing. In northern and eastern regions, snow water availability has increased in recent decades. In some Arctic and sub-Arctic areas, reduced sea ice and warmer air temperatures enhance atmospheric moisture, increasing snowfall in northern regions.

However, in Western Canada, especially within the Rocky Mountains, significant declines in SWA are emerging in mid-elevation mountain headwaters. These regions feed major river drainage systems, including the Saskatchewan, Fraser and Columbia river basins.

The response of mountain snowpack to warming is strongly elevation-dependent. High alpine zones, where winter temperatures remain well below freezing, can retain relatively stable snowpacks. Low elevations may already experience intermittent snow.

However, mid-elevation transitional zones, where winter temperatures frequently hover near freezing, are especially climate-sensitive. Small temperature increases can shift precipitation from snow to rain, shorten snow-cover duration and accelerate melt timing and rate.

This creates an important asymmetry. Although overall, SWA has increased across Canada and Alaska between 2000 and 2019, gains in sparsely populated northern regions do not compensate for losses in southern and western headwaters where water demand is highest.

In addition, mountain regions function as natural water towers. When snow storage declines there, the effects propagate downstream through entire river basins. Where snow disappears can matter more for water supply reliability than how much accumulates elsewhere. The geography of loss matters.

Uneven snowpack

The impacts can be amplified when declines in western headwaters coincide with widespread but less statistically pronounced decreases downstream. Combined, these patterns influence drainage basins that support a large share of Canada’s population and economic activity.

Historical events underscore this vulnerability. The 2015 Western Canada snow drought reduced streamflow originating in Rocky Mountain headwaters, stressing municipal systems, agriculture and aquatic ecosystems. During the winter of 2011-2012, reduced snowpack in southern Ontario and Québec contributed to depressed Great Lakes water levels, affecting shipping and water management.

Climate variability adds further complexity. Large-scale ocean–atmosphere patterns can amplify or temporarily offset warming effects from year to year. Some winters remain snow-rich; others are dominated by rain-on-snow and/or mid-winter melt events. But long-term warming increases the likelihood of SWA loss in patchy snow regimes across climate-sensitive elevations.

Despite its advantages, our proposed SWA is not free of uncertainty. Snow observations remain sparse in remote northern and high-elevation regions. Satellite products are affected by cloud cover, vegetation and polar nights.

Climate reanalyses rely on modelling assumptions that vary among models and products. While basin-scale trends can be detected with reasonable confidence, uncertainty increases at finer spatial scales, where slope orientation, vegetation, terrain details and microclimate greatly affect SWA.

As water management decisions increasingly require sub-basin precision, improving spatial resolution and physical realism in snow monitoring becomes essential. Future research will require improved satellite observations, enhanced land-surface modelling and expanded ground-based monitoring networks.

In a warming climate, understanding how much snow exists, where it persists, how fragmented it becomes and how quickly it disappears will be central to anticipating water supply risks.

Canada’s snowpack is not simply shrinking or growing; it is becoming more uneven. And in an uneven landscape, the location of loss can matter more than the total amount of gain.

Ali Nazemi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Warming winters are reshaping Canada’s snowpack – https://theconversation.com/warming-winters-are-reshaping-canadas-snowpack-275677