Stephen Sheppard is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Forest Resources Management in the UBC Faculty of Forestry, and Director of the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP). He holds degrees from Oxford (BA, MA), UBC (MSc), and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.). He joined the department in 1998, with a joint appointment in Landscape Architecture, and retired in 2021. His other appointments included Adjunct Professor at Nanjing Forestry University, China, and a Sustainability Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth, UK.
While at UBC Sheppard’s main research interests focused on: climate change planning, outreach, and community engagement, including sea-level rise planning and discussion of low-carbon resilient communities; visioning methods and visualization of climate change causes, impacts, and mitigation/adaptation; visualization of low-carbon future scenarios; community energy planning, renewables, and energy literacy, including energy effects of urban forests; landscape planning; public perceptions, aesthetics and sustainability; and social aspects of forestry. He also was involved in developing videogames as an educational tool on climate change. As Director of CALP Sheppard led an interdisciplinary research group which works with communities on developing climate change and energy solutions. He has over forty years experience as a consultant in environmental assessment, aesthetics, landscape planning, and public involvement. He has also published five books, including Visualizing Climate Change (2012), as well as numerous scholarly articles.