I completed my Master’s degree at the University of Waterloo from 2003 -2005. My work was the first ever field-scale climate change experiment in a peatland and provided valuable insight into what might happen to peatlands under a 2 x CO2 climate change scenario. We achieved surrogacy by draining peatland ponds (one in a fen, one in a bog) 20 cm (the expected water table decline under a warmer climate) and measure the results against un-impacted ponds (as a control).
After my Master’s I worked for a year or so for Dr. Jonathan Price in the Wetlands Hydrology Lab at the University of Waterloo supervising some undergraduate projects in Quebec and New Brunswick, as well as conducting some lab experiments. The Quebec research was in Cancouna (near Riviere du Loup) looking at the restoration of a block-cut peatland. In New Brunswick we were looking at the impacts of a tidal wave (salt water intrusion into a vacuum harvested peatland – it was very wet and very hard to walk around!
I then started a PhD with Dr. Price looking at the impacts of the Victor Diamond Mine to the peatlands surrounding the mine. Most of my work focused on the groundwater-surface water connection between the dewatered limestone aquifer and the surficial peatland aquifer; this meant understanding the role of the marine sediments that lay between these layers.
I joined BU in July 2014.
My current research focuses on two main themes:
- Peatland restoration in south eastern Manitoba
- Soil hydraulic properties of different species of moss
While these two areas are quite different in terms of scale, they compliment each other nicely as often we need to understand hydrological processes at the micro/moss level scale to understand the landscape/peatland scale hydrological fluxes.
I can be reached via email or phone at the Dept. of Geography home page.