Dr. Sharon Gillies is an associate professor of biology who’s been teaching at UFV for over 25 years. She completed her PhD in Plant Physiology at Simon Fraser University, going on to do post-doctoral research at the Agassiz Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre investigating postharvest physiology of fruits and vegetables. Her current research examines Japanese knotweed, which she dubs “Godzilla” for its abilities as an invasive shrub. Gillies is also a member of the Global Rivers Observatory network, which collects data on waterways to examine the role of rivers in transporting carbon. This semester, Gillies teaches BIO 310: Conservation Biology and BIO 410/GEOG 410: Plant Ecology.
I noticed that student research seems to be something you’re passionate about. Is there a reason for that?
It’s fun to let students explore different avenues. I think it strengthens your knowledge base and your ability to analyze if you would do at least one research course. For me, it doesn’t really matter what you do it in, just get the experience.
I give students the option to work on microplastics. I had one student who’s growing radishes with microplastic she put in the soil because apparently plants can take it up. She’ll be sacrificing [the radishes] next week. That’s our kind way of saying the radishes are getting cooked.
I saw that a lot of your work in research focuses on invasive plants, so I was curious — why did you decide to focus on Japanese knotweed specifically?
It was probably about 15 years ago. I spotted this plant across the street from UFV, and I went “what the heck is that?” I hadn’t seen it before, but that year as I was doing field trips with students I saw it at the top of Seymour mountain. I started noticing it everywhere. And this was before people recognized it was a huge problem. So I found out what it was and started going, “okay, we have to map this — find out where it is.” So, that’s how it started.
I read one paper in North America where it said, “it appears they’re producing seeds that may germinate.” It’s a huge problem in England, and it doesn’t produce viable seed because it was a female clone that they brought in. Turns out that in North America, and in parts of Europe, it’s hybridizing with another invasive knotweed — giant knotweed — and the seed is viable.
You mentioned that it’s hybridizing with giant knotweed. When you say a lot of hybrids, does that mean a lot of germinating baby plants?
Yes, baby plants, and each one of those is genetically unique because you have two different parents from different species. Then we found out that they do a lot of epigenetics as well, so some of them are tolerant to glyphosate, some are tolerant to salt. And that’s all epigenetics. It’s an amazing plant.
Are there any ways you recommend that students can help prevent the spread of invasive plants?
Absolutely. If you see it on your property, remove it quickly. That’s absolutely the easiest way to get rid of any of these — from purple loosestrife, Japanese knotweed, to giant hogweed. I mean some of them are beautiful, and that’s why they were brought in. Because, hey, look at how pretty it is — but they take over. Just remove it, get rid of it, don’t compost it. Just [put it in the] garbage.
I saw the recent article — congrats by the way — on becoming CHASI’s faculty associate. When I was reading the description for CHASI, it almost seemed vague. Could you explain what CHASI’s goal is?
I think it’s to form a community of faculty and other people interested in research and promoting collaborative work. I mean, they really are so collaborative; it’s amazing. It doesn’t matter what field you’re in. If you have a project and you think they might be able to help, and they probably can, they will jump in. So yeah, it is vague. Because it’s this whole group of helpful, fabulous people. I don’t think you can define it.
I was reading about you working with larger organizations to measure water quality. Could you explain the importance of the transportation of carbon to the ocean?
One is that there’s organic carbon which is nutrients from the land travelling to the ocean … We want to look at carbon balance. If you think about what’s going on with our mountain pine beetle and plant death — is there a big flush of carbon coming through because of these trees dying? And it kind of gives us a handle on what is the importance of the movement of carbon in rivers overall for the planet because we actually have people working on about up to 14 rivers — everything from the Amazon to the Ganges … What is the comparison? Can we see changes over time? What’s happening in our rivers and how does that relate to the carbon cycle? Which, of course, with climate change is important.
Is that project still in the data collection phase, or is there any insight you’ve gained so far?
For the carbon part of it, they’re still in the data collection … Some of the data is published, but we haven’t started doing the comparisons yet.
The fun has yet to come.
Oh, yeah. And, you know, as we collect more data over time — what sort of trends are we looking at? Snapshots are snapshots. To me, in ecology, a lot of the important stuff is long term.
Image: Sharon Gillies
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
