Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

Faculty of Science

EES Research in the News

EES' Dr. Sian Kou-Giesbrecht co-authored two new reports examining the impact of climate change on wildfires (DalNews):
Attributing human mortality from fire PM2.5 to climate change (Nature Climate Change)
Global burned area increasingly explained by climate change (Nature Climate Change)

Meet EES' Dr. Sian Kou‑Giesbrecht, biogeochemist (Dal News): Get to know Dr. Sian Kou‑Giesbrecht, who shares how her early fascination with ecology and climate change sparked her interest in environmental science.

Sciographies talks to biogeochemist Dr. Sian Kou-Giesbrecht from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Dalhousie University:  https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-40-dr-sian-kou-giesbrecht-biogeochemist/id1410209562?i=1000674271901

They’ve Got a Plan to Fight Global Warming. It Could Alter the Oceans (New York Times article featuring Dr. Shannon Sterling) 

This summer, CarbonRun, co-founded by EES' Dr. Shannon Sterling, is conducting a river alkalinity enhancement project in Pictou County that aims to help restore the salmon population while removing CO2 from the atmosphere: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-s-rivers-still-suffer-from-acid-rain-restoring-them-could-also-help-the-climate-1.7239696?cmp=rss 

At Work: Miao Zhang: What is a seismologist, and what does she or he do all day? The At Work column gives you a chance to meet our members and learn more about the broad span of disciplines and careers within seismology (Seismological Society of America) 

Where Ideas Meet Impact: Hydrologist's [Dr. Shannon Sterling] research positions her to take a global lead in atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (DalNews)

EES MSc student, Anna Ryan's (along with her supervisor Vittorio Maselli and fellow Dal researcher Tony Walker) research documenting microplastics that were scooped up from the North Atlantic and deposited on land (Newfoundland) during Hurricane Larry in 2021 featured in the following news outlets:

Meet Shannon Sterling, environmental scientist

CarbonRun, founded by EES' Dr. Shannon Sterling, is among 12 startups who had $7M worth of carbon removal services purchased by the Frontier fund. Read more about CarbonRun's project and the funding commitment made: https://frontierclimate.com/writing/fall-2023-purchases  CarbonRun got a nice shout-out in Bloomberg as well: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-07/frontier-climate-change-fund-makes-7-million-in-new-carbon-removal-commitments  Congratulations to Shannon and the whole CarbonRun team, including some of our EES technicians and undergraduate summer students: Alex Bevilacqua, Kristin Hart, Rowan Norrad and Elena Milito. 

Congratulations to Mladen Nedimovic on his 5-year appointment to a Killam Professorship. This award is meant to recognize the careers of only the most outstanding scientists. Dr. Nedimovic has been recognized for his outstanding contributions in the field of marine geophysics.

Congratulation to Dr. Kelvin Fong on being selected one of thirteen early-career health researchers in Nova Scotia to received a New Health Investigator Grant.  The grant will aid Dr. Fong in the investigation of the environmental contribution to health inequalities in Nova Scotia. https://researchns.ca/2023/01/10/research-nova-scotia-supports-early-career-health-researchers-with-1-22-million-in-funding/

Researchers from Dalhousie and several European institutions, including EES' John Gosse, determined that DNA found preserved in ice in Greenland was over two million years old.
TV news stories: World’s oldest DNA discovered in Greenland, studied by Halifax geoscientist (CTV News) and Canadian researcher helps discovery of 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland (Global News) 

Have a listen to a 2-part Geology Bites podcast with Emeritus Professor Martin Gibling on rivers and their geological history: https://www.geologybites.com/martin-gibling

Recent work highlighted by the American Geophysical Union by Dal researchers (Hanchao Jian, Mladen R. Nedimović, Juan Pablo Canales, K. W. Helen Lau) offers new insights into the rifting event that created the Atlantic Ocean: The Role of Magma in the Birth of the Atlantic Ocean  

Follow the progress of the 2021 CCGS Amundsen expedition to explore deep-sea coral and seep habitats of the Northern Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay. Six members of Dalhousie's Earth and Environmental Sciences and Oceanography departments and the Flux Lab are on board for the 4 week journey: https://data.amundsen.ulaval.ca

Grant Wach has been awarded the prestigious D’Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship by the Ireland Canada University Foundation (ICUF). This fellowship enables leading Irish and Canadian academics, researchers, and thinkers to connect and engage, via online lectures. Dr. Wach will showcase his research in a lecture on Energy Sustainability, Atlantic Margin Geology, and Geoforensics.  

EES' Shannon Sterling contributes to Chronicle Herald article on global warming: Global warming trend accelerating in 2020 'unusual,' alarming, Dalhousie prof says

NS Salmon Association research scientist & EES adjunct, Edmund Halfyard, on the Todd Veinotte Show discussing study co-authored by Shannon Sterling that found aluminum concentrations in NS rivers are too high to sustain healthy aquatic life. Many former EES students (Marley Geddes, Siobhan Takla, Sarah MacLeod and Lobke Rotteveel) contributed to the study he discusses. Segment starts at the 10:30 mark.

Aluminum concentrations in Nova Scotia rivers are too high to sustain healthy aquatic life, according to a study by EES' Shannon Sterling and team. You can find the paper in the Hydrology and Earth System Sciences journal: https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/24/4763/2020/hess-24-4763-2020.html

Vittorio Maselli's recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters was selected as an Editor’s Highlight on Eos.org:  Abrupt Climate Shifts Change the Latitudes of Storm Activity

Climate crisis lurking in the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic | The Chronicle Herald (Featuring EES' Shannon Sterling)

Mike Young and coop student Rosa Toutah are leading an ambitious project to create virtual field trips for many of our Fall Term courses. See https://sketchfab.com/mike.young for preliminary 3D models of field sites and sample.

Congratulations to Vittorio Maselli for leading this groundbreaking research on tsunami deposits just published in Geology and now featured in Dal on-line: How a 1,000‑year‑old tsunami in the Indian Ocean points to greater risk than originally thought

Check out this article featuring retired Earth Sciences' professor Dr. Barrie Clark: https://halifaxmag.com/features/titanic-tombstones/

Can liming N.S. forests help fight climate change?
NS: Mainstreet Halifax's Jeff Douglas spoke with EES' Shannon Sterling, who is researching whether liming forests can help them absorb more carbon dioxide.

EES' Shannon Sterling on CBC's Quirks & Quarks
Listen to Shannon answer Quirks and Quarks' question of the week: "As water covers most of the Earth, why isn't it completely shrouded in clouds?"

Halifax scientists endorse climate emergency letter

Meet EES' John Gosse, a geologist with a passion for landscape evolution and teaching the science of natural disasters.
The Sciographies Podcast – Episode 11: John Gosse, Geologist

Moon metals: New research considers what lies below the moon's surface