Earth and Environmental Science Undergraduate Research Awards

• Nurture your interest and fully develop your potential for a research career in Earth and Environmental Science!
• Successful students will work closely with a supervisor in the Department on a research project throughout summer 2023.
• For more information. 
• Deadline for electronic submission of applications to shannon.sterling@dal.ca is February 3rd, 2023

Congratulations to the EES graduate and undergraduate students who all did such an excellent job presenting their research at the 2023 Atlantic Geoscience Colloquium in Truro on Fri-Sat. Our own Maureen Mathew received the Sandra Barr Award for Best Graduate Student Presentation. Also, Dr. P. K. Mukhopadhyay (Muki), a good friend of EES for many years, was awarded the Gesner Medal, which recognizes " a person who has developed and promoted the advancement of geoscience in the Atlantic Region in any field of geology". Grant Wach accepted the award on Muki's behalf.

Congratulations to EES' Maureen Matthews, recipient of the Atlantic Geoscience Society's Best Grad Presentation at the 49th AGS Colloquium (Truro, NS, February 3-5).

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/

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Marcos Zentilli, who was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal by Lt.-Governor Arthur J. LeBlanc on Nov 24th 2022. This award is presented to Nova Scotians who have made a significant contribution to Canada, Nova Scotia, or their community. The award was made to Marcos in recognition of his volunteer work and “Contributions to International Relations” as Honorary Consul of Chile for the Atlantic Provinces since 2010. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cli3AkTL5rq/

Congratulations to the 2022 MacEachern - Ponsford Memorial Award recipient, Megan MacDonald and to the 2022 G.V. Douglas Award recipient, Yarden Gedalia.

Congratulations to Dr Les Eliuk (PhD with Grant Wach) for recent honorary membership into the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists. Honorary Membership is the oldest award bestowed by the CSPG and made to persons who have contributed distinguished service to the cause of energy geosciences.

Min Liu, our previous visiting PhD student and current OFI Postdoc Fellow, received the distinguished PhD thesis award from the Chinese Geophysical Society (ranked#3 out of 5). This award is based on an assessment of theses in all fields of Geophysics, and there are thousands of Geophysics PhD students in China! Congratulations Min!

Humanities and social science researchers receive $1.5M in new grants, including ESS' Tarah Wright for her project "Leveraging art to create a sustainable future".

Dalhousie ranked 8th (out of 20) in MacLean's Canada’s best university environmental science programs 2021: https://www.macleans.ca/education/canadas-best-university-environmental-science-programs-2021-rankings/

Congratulations Dr. Heather Cray on receiving the Contract and Limited‑Term Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. Your focus on Universal Design for Learning and accessibility is a model for others, and your supportive, service-oriented teaching is appreciated by both students and colleagues. https://tinyurl.com/yckvv86p

Congratulations to the Biodiversity Working Group (and EES' Susan Gass, Amy Mui and Heather Cray) recipient of the Dalhousie University 2022 Academic
Innovation Award. They were commended for providing students with connections to real-world problems & hands-on field experiences. https://tinyurl.com/ycksxr8h

Congratulations to EES' Kathleen Clark, the 2022 Volcanology and Igneous Petrology (VIP) Gelinas Medal for the best BSc thesis. The selection committee were very impressed by Kathleen's work and exceptional research. The medal will be awarded on May 26 at the GAC-VIP AGM. http://www.vip-gac.ca/Awards.html

Congratulations 2022 Earth Ring recipients! https://mobile.twitter.com/Dal_ESnENVS/status/1518918230357729281

Congratulations to all those who received awards at the 2022 Earth and Environmental Sciences End-of-Year Awards Banquet:
MacEachern-Ponsford Award: Michael Powell
Douglas Award: Brooke Reid
James L. Hall Scholarship: Samantha Shapira
Brian MacLean Memorial Prize: Sadie Jacobs-Peters
Milligan Undergraduate Award: Megan MacDonald and Sana Salehi
David Barlow Memorial Award: Megan MacDonald
Michael Keen Research Award: Catherine Brenan
Art and Dorothy Cook Scholarship: Hope Moon
Environmental Science Award: Lauren Lowther and Levyn Radomske
Owen Hertzman Prize: Catherine Brenan and Emma Taniguchi
Pearson Education Canada Book Prize: Kiah Heneke-Flindall
NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards: Elena Milito and Kailyn Hanke
Professor of the year: Amy Mui
TA of the year: Jessica Needham
Best Honours Thesis: Kathleen Clark (ERTH) and Hope Moon (ENVS)
Best Thesis Presentation and Defence: Michael Powell (ERTH) and Camryn Gallagher (ENVS)

Congratulations Science Atlantic Environment Conference 2022 participants and award recipients, including EES' own Ashlynn Fleming, Science Atlantic Undergraduate Research Award First Place (Examining the relationship between marginalization and change in Toronto’s urban forest between 2008 and 2018) and Camryn Gallagher, Science Atlantic Undergraduate Research Award Second Place (Evaluating the historic change in consumption of high-impact animal products in Canada).

Congratulations to Earth and Environmental Sciences' MSc student (supervised by Mladen Nedimovic) and Physical Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, Dustin Whalen, and the Tuktoyaktuk Community Climate Resiliency Project team, recipients of a  prestigious Arctic Inspiration Prize valued at $500,000! https://arcticinspirationprize.ca/a-10th-anniversary-ceremony-to-remember/

Congratulations to former Earth Sciences faculty member and chair, Prof Peter Reynolds (1973-2006) who was honoured this past weekend with the Gesner Medal, the Distinguished Scientist Award, from the Atlantic Geological Society.
The award is made to a person who has, through their own efforts (maps, publications, memoirs, etc.) developed and promoted the advancement of geoscience in the Atlantic Region in any field of geology; of large enough scope to have made an impact beyond the immediate Atlantic Region. 

Congratulations Kathleen Clark, winner of Science Atlantic best paper at the AUGC 2021. 

Congratulations to EES' Bailey Milos on achieving U SPORTS Academic All-Canadian status during the 2020-21 season: https://www.daltigers.ca/tradition_of_excellence/AAC/Tigers_announce_a_record_186_Academic_All-Canadians

Congratulations to Prof Emeritus Marcos Zentilli for his appointment as an honorary member of the Geological Society of Chile "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the knowledge and dissemination of Geology in Chile to the national and international community, as well as to society". https://twitter.com/Dal_ESnENVS/status/1453108773497753600

Congratulations Catherine Brenan, recipient of the Atlantic Chapter Dillon Consulting Limited Scholarship for 2021!  

Congratulations to Dr. Arthur Dyke (Geological Survey of Canada, Retired and EES Adjunct) on being named a Fellow in The Royal Society of Canada's Class of 2021. For more information see: https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/2021%20New%20Members.pdf

Congratulations Alexandra (Lexie) Arnott, recipient of The Centre for Learning and Teaching's Contract and Limited-term Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2021. Excellence in education: Meet this year’s Dalhousie teaching award winners

Congratulations to Vittorio Maselli! His paper on the Mafia mega-slide and its relation with EARS earthquakes, "Large-scale mass wasting in the western Indian Ocean constrains onset of East African rifting", published last year in Nature Communications, has been selected for a collection of Nature papers focusing on Natural Hazards: https://www.nature.com/collections/bdhajfjhbc

Congratulations to all those who received awards at the 2021 Earth and Environmental Sciences End-of-Year Awards Banquet:
Michael Keen Memorial Award: Rosa Toutah (ERTH)
David Barlow Memorial Award: Bailey Milos (ERTH)
Art and Dorothy Cook Scholarship: Sage Mosgrove (ENVS)
Environmental Science Award: Brooklin Craig (ENVS)
Owen Hertzman Prize: Michelle Mann and Chiara Ferrero-Wong (ENVS)
Pearson Education Canada Book Prize: Roberto Noriega Burrill (ENVS)
Professor of the Year: Heather Cray (ENVS), Michael Young (ERTH)
TA of the Year: Nina Garrett (ENVS), Lauren Morris (ERTH)
Best Thesis Presentation and Defence: Andrew Willms (ENVS), Anna Ryan (ERTH)
Best Honours Thesis: Nina Garrett (ENVS), Michael Kishchuk (ERTH)

Congratulations Mariah St. Pierre, one of Dalhousie's Top Co-op Students of the Year for 2020. Mariah is an ENVS Major COOP with a Minor in Statistics and the GIS Certificate.

Congratulations Science Atlantic Environment Conference 2021 participants and award recipients. The day was highlighted by impressive performances and presentations all around, with our students bringing home the following awards:
Undergraduate Research Award (best research presentation): 2nd place Samantha Howard
Communication Award (the student who is best able to communicate a science topic to his or her peers: 1st place Nina Garrett
Acadian Award (best presentation on Acadian fauna or flora): Andrew Willms
Science Atlantic Graduate Research Award: 1st place, Rachel Noddle

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.

2021 AGS student awards: Congratulations to EES' Bailey Milos, Rupert McNeil Award recipient for the best undergrad presentation and Anna Ryan, Honourable Mention recipient.

Siobhan Takala who was a double major in Environmental Science (Faculty of Science) and the Environment Sustainability and Society program (College of Sustainability) has been named one of the  Top 25 Environmentalists under 25  for 2020 by the Starfish Group. She has been recognized for her work in co-founding “Let’s Sprout”  which creates spaces for youth to learn and grow, with a special focus on important issues within society, such as the environment and gender. Two Recent Dal Grads Named to Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 List (DalNews 2021/01/29)

Kudos to Samantha Howard (Combined Honours in Environmental Science and IDS) in winning the Inaugural Margaret R. Crickard Scholarship (DalNews 2020/11/26).

Congratulations Earth and Environmental Sciences Fall 2020 Memorial Award Recipients:
Michael Powell, James L. Hall Scholarship
Megan MacDonald, G.V. Douglas Memorial Award
Michael Kishchuk, MacEachern-Ponsford Memorial Award 

Congratulations Nina Garrett, Joy M Cunningham Award Recipient, one of the top three finalists in the FoS' 2020 Summer Research Contest: How similarity to parental calls affects call discrimination in noise by... https://youtu.be/VEdhEh6lqqw

Congratulations Anna Ryan, NSERC Award Recipient, Honourable Mention in the FoS' 2020 Summer Research Contest:Tracking ocean currents through time https://youtu.be/0F5o22hFA_4

Congratulations  new Canada Research Chair, Dr. Vittorio Maselli, Canada Research Chair in Coastal Zone Processes: https://www.dal.ca/news/2020/08/26/dalhousie-team-of-canada-research-chairs-continues-to-grow.html

Congratulations to Susan Gass, this year's recipient of the Faculty of Science Award of Excellence for Teaching. https://twitter.com/Dal_ESnENVS/status/1249767644242350096

Congratulations 2020 Earth and Environmental Sciences' Earth Ring Recipients!

Watch 3 Minute Thesis competition finalist, Caitlin McCavour's presentation: https://youtu.be/WN7nlMRmzDY

Joining forces
Introducing the Department of Earth and Environmental Science

Europe's unusually warm winter weather has serious implications: experts, featuring Grant Wach (Global National News, January 4, 2023)

Congratulations to EES alum (BSc Honours ENVS, 2021), Samantha Howard,  on being named one Starfish Canada's Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25. 

Congratulations to EES' Tarah Wright for the success of the QEII Scholars Program, a field experience in the Bahamas, run through EES and which she is the coordinator of: Research in paradise: Dal's newest Queen Elizabeth Scholars will soon be off to the Bahamas

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)

How a group of Dal educators (including EES' own Susan Gass and Amy Mui) has transformed the outdoors into a classroom

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

Going coastal: Science students (including EES') dive into adventure as field courses return (see photo essay):  

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  

Congratulations EES alum, Lily Barraclough (BSc Honours ENVS, 2020), for being selected as one of Canada's Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalists in 2021: https://thestarfish.ca/top-25-under-25-year/2021

Grant Wach's Q&A with CBC's Information Morning on Premier Tim Houston's pledge to get Nova Scotia to 80 per cent renewable energy by 2030: 80 per cent renewable by 2030 could be a challenge, expert says Listen to Grant's full interview with CBC's Information Morning Cape Breton here: https://youtu.be/yfMc_oESS_I

Minas Basin fossil discovery by Dalhousie Biology instructor and EES alumn (PhD 2018), Jennifer Frail-Gauthier, may help fill gaps in evolutionary record: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/fossil-discovery-blue-beach-nova-scotia-tetrapod-1.6107531?cmp=rss

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

Meet Mike Young, senior instructor at Earth and Environmental Sciences. When the COVID pandemic forced universities to move classes online, Mike took matters into his own hands. (Inteview with EduCanada)

Mastodon dung reveals diet, environment in Nova Scotia some 75,000 years ago (CBC News). Story features Tim Fedak, geological curator of the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, Earth and Environmental Sciences' Adjunct and past Earth Sciences' lecturer.

Watch Planetary Volcanologist (and EES alum, BSc(Hon)2004) Christopher Hamilton as he speaks with Anderson Cooper about Mount Fagradalsfjall. He also speaks about the role drones could play in future Mars missions. (See also DalMagazine's profile: Volcano Watcher)

‘Earth and Marine Sciences', ‘Geology’, ‘Geophysics’ and ‘Petroleum Engineering' all secured spots in the top 100 in global ranking that considers nearly 1,500 universities.

How to grow a young climate leader (a talk with Siobhan Takala, Environmental Science/ Environment Sustainability and Society program alum).

Alumni profile of Lily Briggs (Environmental Studies grad, BA’05). Lily describes the role environmental studies (and EES' Tarah Wright) played in her trajectory as an environmental educator.

The potential of Geographic Information Systems in COVID-19 response: student, Leah Fulton, developes web application to visualize recent exposure locations.

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)

Susan R. Eaton, Earth Sciences Class of 1980 (BSc Honours): Epic Explorer

Dalhousie Originals: Kathryn Sullivan (PhD Dalhousie Geology 1978)
From the Ocean to Outer Space: The Adventures of Dr. Kathy Sullivan (Rolling Stone)
Kathy Sullivan: The woman who's made history in sea and space (BBC)

Jane K. Willenbring, Stanford University (PhD Dalhousie EES 2006, ‘Jane Staiger’) wins the inaugural Marguerite T. Williams Award
https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/Marguerite-Williams-Award
https://eos.org/agu-news/2020-agu-section-awardees-and-named-lecturers

EES student Leah Fulton spent her summer developing guided online campus nature walks. Focused on some of the interesting trees on campus, it's an alternative the lunchtime urban nature walks held last year. Check out the project's story map:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/fb76f66443cc493496df89142d01f393

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.

Going the distance: Recent grad, Graeme Wach, ran 53 kilometres in 24 hours to raise donations for victims of Nova Scotia’s mass shootings

Grad Profile: Lily Barraclough, Building more physically active communities

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

Dr. Kelvin Fong recently published a paper on the intersection of immigrant and environmental health in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives: The Intersection of Immigrant and Environmental Health: A Scoping Review of Observational Population Exposure and Epidemiologic Studies

Check out Miao Zhang and team's new paper "Machine Learning‐Based Earthquake Catalog and Tomography Characterize the Middle‐Northern Section of the Xiaojiang Fault Zone" at https://doi.org/10.1785/0220220116.

How to apply machine-learning phase picker to seamlessly build high-precision earthquake catalogs from continuous waveforms? Please check out Miao Zhang’s new publication in Seismological Research Letters. LOC-FLOW: An End-to-End Machine-Learning-Based High-Precision Earthquake Location Workflow, https://doi.org/10.1785/0220220019. Codes are available on GitHub: https://github.com/Dal-mzhang/LOC-FLOW

Stunning 3D seismic reflection data from the Levant basin (eastern Mediterranean Sea) show how active faulting influence turbidite deposition. Check out the last paper published in GEOLOGY by Vittorio Maselli and colleagues, and the beautiful cover image of the December issue! https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/49/12/1495/607269/Active-faulting-controls-bedform-development-on-a

MES student, Shizhou Ma's MES thesis, Assessing Optimal Digital Elevation Model Selection for Active River Area Delineation Across Broad Regions - Water Resources Management, was recently published by Springer. Shizhou was supervised by SRES' Karen Beazley. EES' Chris Greene served on the supervisory committee.

Congratulations to Martin Gibling on the publication of River Planet: Rivers from Deep Time to the Modern Crisis. River Planet introduces readers to the epic geological history of the world’s rivers, from the first drop of rain on the Earth to the modern environmental crisis.

A new study lead by Alexandre Normandeau and co-authored by Vittorio Maselli is just published in Nature Geoscience and shows that icebergs colliding with the seafloor can generate submarine landslides in Arctic and Subarctic environments. If interested, have a look at this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00767-4 (Free-to-read link: https://rdcu.be/cm8Ry)

Check out Miao Zhang's new paper published in Seismological Research Letters: Source characterization for two small earthquakes in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada: pushing the limit of single station.

Vittorio Maselli's paper on the Mafia mega-slide and its relation with EARS earthquakes, "Large-scale mass wasting in the western Indian Ocean constrains onset of East African rifting", published last year in Nature Communications, has been selected for a collection of Nature papers focusing on Natural Hazards: https://www.nature.com/collections/bdhajfjhbc

Check out Owen Sherwood's new paper published in PNAS on oil and gas wellbore integrity from more than 100k wells in CO/NM/PA: Public data from three US states provide new insights into well integrity

Check out Miao Zhang's new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters: Real-time Earthquake Early Warning with Deep Learning: Application to the 2016 M 6.0 Central Apennines, Italy Earthquake. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL089394

Check out Owen Sherwood's new paper published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta: Amino acid δ13C and δ15N patterns from sediment trap time series and deep-sea corals: implications for biogeochemical and ecological reconstructions in paleoarchives https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016703720307250

Check out Owen Sherwood's new paper: Microbial and Biogeochemical Indicators of Methane in Groundwater Aquifers of the Denver Basin, Colorado: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c04228#.X9GrSHhaKfM.twitter

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

Recent paper published in Nature Geoscience on the origins of iron ore deposits highlighted in this News and Views by James Brenan: https://rdcu.be/b7vG2

Check out Vittorio Maselli's paper "A 1000-yr-old tsunami in the Indian Ocean points to greater risk for East Africa": https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/doi/10.1130/G47257.1/586277/A-1000-yr-old-tsunami-in-the-Indian-Ocean-points
and online at the National Geographic Society's website: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/1000-year-old-bones-oldest-known-east-africa-tsunami-victims/

Check out Vittorio Maselli's paper Tidal modulation of river-flood deposits: How low can you go? just published in the journal GEOLOGY and his new OFI-funded project: https://oceanfrontierinstitute.com/research/pei-source

Check out this paper just published in Nature Geoscience co-authored by EES' James Brenan: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0560-y