Today Paper On Line Good Read

[Slevin]

ST. CATHARINES - A leader in researching the role humans play in environmental change is coming to Brock University.

John Smol, a Brock master of science grad in biology, is returning to his alma mater as the recipient of the "2013 Distinguished Mathematics and Science Alumni Award."

Smol is world-renowned in studying how changes to sediment and other aspects of freshwater lakes tells us how our climate and ecosystems are evolving.

In his Wednesday lecture at Brock, he'll discuss about how Alberta oil sands production has boosted pollution in that area since the 1960s.

He'll also touch on ongoing difficulty faced by environmental scientists — a lack of reliable long-term monitoring data, making it tougher to determine environmental transitions.

"We basically look at lake sediments. They're wonderful for us, as they're accumulating constantly at the lake's bottom," said Smol, 58, who is professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change at Queen’s University.

"It's like a time machine, where the deeper you go in the mud the older it is."

That sediment core "is like a history book," said the expert in freshwater sciences known as limnology and paleolimnology. He said in that sediment is "often a very-interpretable history of how the lake has changed, and why," through things like chemicals and micro-fossils.

"But all of these studies need a good time component to them, and that's one of our biggest challenges," he added.

His goal — from ongoing research focused in Ontario and the Arctic — is to know more about what stresses these lake ecosystems.

"The information reveals, 'is there a problem, if so when did it start, what caused it and how much improvement can be expected?"

And why is this important?

Smol points to climate change and its link to greenhouse gases. "We can use our methods to reconstruct long-term environment and show that climate (since) the last 100 years or so, is completely going wacko basically," he said. "And we can link it to things like greenhouse gases, then see how the ecosystem is being affected by it."

Among recent findings was a collaboration with a science team who found that drilling wastes produced by oil and gas exploration activities in the 1970s and 1980s in Canada's Mackenzie Delta are leaching from some drilling mud sumps into nearby lakes. This is affecting water quality and aquatic organisms.

Prof. Michael Pisaric from Brock's geography department has co-authored research papers with Smol and knows his work well.

"The work he'd been doing … addresses very important environmental questions," said Pisaric. "It's from acid rain to recent work on the impact of oil sands in Alberta."

"His work provides a much longer-term context to these environmental changes … it pushes us back over a century and even longer to give us an indication of how much the environment has changed, and most importantly the impact we're having on it."

Smol, who did his master's from 1977-79, describes Brock of his era as "a very different place."

"When I was at Brock, we were at Glenridge Campus, an abandoned refrigerator factory at the base of the big hill," he said. "In there was biology, chemistry and physics."

"I can't believe how much Brock has changed, and I really look forward to heading back."

Who: Brock University grad John Smol (MSc '79) recipient of the 2013 Distinguished Mathematics and Science Alumni Award, and Canada Research Chair, Environmental Change, Queen’s University

What: Smol gives Brock Faculty of Mathematics and Science Distinguished Alumni Lecture —“The Past Matters, Studying the Effects of Human Impacts on Aquatic Ecosystems Using Lake Sediments”

When/Where: Wed. at 7 p.m., South Block AS217, Brock's Walker Complex, free to the public