AS A SCIENTIST, MELANIE DICKIE FIRMLY BELIEVES in the power of data to inform decisions. As a person, she enjoys spending time in the outdoors and is passionate about caring for the environment. The combination of these personal feelings and her scientific interest come together to inform her research career on the pathways that link human-caused landscape changes to caribou—a threatened species in Canada.

Dickie’s passion for preserving and restoring ecosystems in Canada’s north stemmed from fieldwork she undertook in Nunavut during her undergraduate degree.

“It was during that trip I fell in love with the idea of how humans and climate change impact ecosystems, and how these factors combine to influence the natural world we live in,” she says.

Following her undergraduate degree, Dickie completed a master’s degree at the University of Alberta and then moved into the not-for-profit sector with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI). At ABMI, Dickie continued to dedicate her work to providing scientifically credible information to support land use and management decisions.