Lab News

  • The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) has released our report  “Nature-Based Climate Solutions”, available on the CCA’s website. Our report examined the potential for enhancing carbon storage and reducing emissions through nature-based solutions to support climate change mitigation and adaptation planning to support policy by Canada Environment and Climate Change Canada, and six other supporting federal departments and agencies.
  • Congratulations to Meryem Upson got an honorable mention award for her undergrad poster presentation “Controls on Water Table Fluctuations in Two Salt Marshes on New Brunswick’s Baie des Chaleurs” at the Atlantic Canada Coastal and Estuarine Science Society Conference in April 2022.
  • Congratulations to Jiali Gu for winning 2nd place at the ACCESS conference in Halifax for her "Contributions of invasive Phragmites to soil volume and (blue) carbon in a St. Lawrence saltmarsh"!    This September Jiali returned to Zhejiang University to finish her PhD.  We wish her luck and will miss her.   
  •  Part of Lee van Ardenne's MSc thesis is now published in Geoderma.  You can download a copy of "The importance of geomorphic context for estimating the carbon stock of salt marshes" here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1XI1Q3p6oC38q
  • Dr. Thorsten Balke of Glasgow University spent part of June visiting the salt marshes of the Bay of Fundy with Gail Chmura.  He is examining marsh ecosystem response to variability in tidal range, covering the New Brunswick coast of the Bay.
  • "Wetlands In a Changing Climate: Science, Policy and Management" has been published today in the journal Wetlands. Thanks to past SWS president Gillian Davies and Bill Moomaw for getting this to completion!  The article is available at https://rdcu.be/KMKR
  • MSc student Shayne Levoy won the best graduate student poster award (from a field of 161!) at the international conference of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation conference in Providence, Rhode Island. Thanks to the New England Estuarine Research Society for a travel award to Shayne.​
  • "The Younger Dryas in palynological records form the northern Northwest Atlantic: Does the terrestrial record lag the marine and air records"  has been published by Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.  This was based on M.Sc. student Simone Sandercombe's thesis, co-supervised by Profs. Levac and Chmura.  Also thanks to Farida Rahman of the lab for help with this figure used in the paper!
  • Another paper from PhD alumna Andrea Price's dissertation has been published: "Dinoflagellate cysts track eutrophication in the northern Gulf of Mexico"  in Estuaries and Coasts.

Opportunities for Graduate Students and Postdocs

I welcome applications from potential PDF, PhD and MSc (preferably to fast track to PhD) students interested in research on marine coastal ecosystems.  
Please see the Opportunities page for information about applying and funding.

Opportunities for Undergraduate Students

I supervise undergraduate research projects at McGill throughout the year and welcome volunteers.  Please see the Opportunities page for more information.

In THE Media

Blue Carbon and Gail on CBC
CBC's Brett Ruskin did a great job covering blue carbon, Dipper Harbour and even photosynthesis! His CBC TV piece is viewable here.
His website version is here.

Canadian Marshlands, Blue Carbon, and Gail on CBC's What on Earth?
Listen to the episode here.
Where We Work!
Each pin is located on a portion of coastline or estuary that the lab has conducted research on.  You can zoom in to find place names and by clicking on the pin find references to the articles reporting the study we performed that includes that location.

Contact

Department of Geography
McGill University
805 Sherbooke Street West
Montreal, QC   Canada H3A 0B9

Phone: (514) 926-6854
gail.chmura at mcgill.ca
Page last updated 2023-3-1.