Kevin E. Percy PhD

Dr. Kevin Percy has over 40 years of experience in forest health, air pollution/climate change research, and monitoring. He recently served on the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on the Potential for New and Emerging Technologies to Reduce the Environmental Impacts of Oil Sands Development. Dr. Percy retired on March 31, 2016, as Executive Director of the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA). Dr. Percy oversaw the operation of the Association, and reported directly to the Governance Committee of the WBEA Board, representing three levels of government, industries, an ENGO, and Indigenous (First Nation/Métis) communities. Dr. Percy engaged continuously with all 38 member representatives and contributed to developing scientific, consensus-based monitoring plans. With the Elders of the Fort McKay Community, he co-led one of the most successful twinnings of Elder Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK) with western science, the Berry Monitoring Project.

Prior to joining WBEA in January 2009, Dr. Percy was Senior Scientist-Global Change with Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) - Canadian Forest Service. Until May 2008, Dr. Percy served as a Principal Investigator and co-director of the world’s largest greenhouse gas-forest experiment, the ecosystem-scale Aspen Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Experiment located in Wisconsin, USA.

Dr. Percy has authored over 140 peer-reviewed scientific publications (6,000 citations; >16,600 reads) with co-authors in over 20 countries in leading journals and books, including the 2012 peer-reviewed book Alberta Oil Sands: Energy, Industry and the Environment. His publications include work on air pollutant exposure-response, new monitoring concepts/design, retrospective state of scientific analyses, scientific literacy for policy discussion, and informed decision making. Selected articles are listed in Publications.