Originally from southern BC, I've been making a northward progression of Alberta universities for more than a decade, finally arriving at the U of A, following a stint at Simon Fraser University. I work mostly in northwestern Canada and Alaska on a range of projects, most all relating to natural hazards and the evolution of Arctic climate of the late Cenozoic. Most of these projeects include Quaternary sedimentology and tephra as a means to provide chronology. The people in my lab work on a diverse group of projects- but mostly all related in some way to climate change in northern Canada.
Grant completed his PhD in Biology at Simon Fraser University- though unofficially he's been on the pre-doc here for a while at U of A. Grant has been collaborating with me for about 5 years now on paleoecology projects in the Yukon. He has developed some largely untapped archives associated with fossil arctic ground squirrel middens during the last glaciation and the early Wisconsinan (MIS 4). Now he's mostly working on plant macrofossils from past interglacials and the mid-Wisconsinan from northern Yukon as part of a project on environmental change in Old Crow Flats and the record of glacial lake Old Crow.
Berto is a member of the SFU mafia that arrived shortly after I did at U of A. We overlapped at SFU, while Berto was completing his MSc. He gave up the certainty of the Holocene and rock glaciers for the bright lights of the middle Pleistocene. He moved to Alberta shortly after I did. His project involves study of the last interglacial in Yukon and Alaska, and in particular trying to get a handle on two issues: first the question of relict permafrost and what impact did last interglacial warming have on ground ice in the western Arctic and subarctic; and secondly, extracting high resolution climate proxies from sub-fossil wood associated with last interglacial 'forest' beds.
Mike is another transplanted British Columbian, but this time from Terrace, BC via an undergraduate degree in Earth Sciences at UVic. He is working with jointly with the Ground Hazards group in Civil Engineering on a debris flow hazard evaluation project in the Yellowhead Pass near Mt. Robson. He will defend in October and has taken a position with Geological/Geotechnical Engineering Firm in the Edmonton area working mainly on ground hazards.
Originally from the south of England, Simon came to the U of A following an undergraduate degree at the University of Plymouth. With a dependence on take out food and an aversion to mosquitoes and bears, Simon took on a project looking at the last glacial-to-interglacial transition in central Alaska. He's made some interesting discoveries about the history of spruce and late glacial climate in Alaska. In short, he's survived and is working on plant macrofossils from this transition...due to be finished in 2006.
Despite growing up in a dubious part of BC, Britta has overcome her formative experiences to become a pretty decent tephrochronologist. Following an undergraduate degree at SFU in Earth Sciences and a stint as the student president (a bit of an overachiever!) Britta ventured east to the prairies to start an MSc. on the tephrochronology of east-central Alaska in Yukon-Charley rivers National Preserve. She's okay in the jet boat- just be ready to go fast!!
Kristen is new to the lab, but pretty well known from her time with the Yukon Geological Survey (a.k.a. Music Fest weekends) and being another transplant from SFU. She's passionate about Pleistocene mammals and is working on the history of meltwater drainage into the Bell Basin of northern Yukon. Prior to this she's worked in industry and with the YGS on surficial mapping and drift exploration projects.
Jen Chomyk- BSc. Candidate, NSERC Undergrad and general lab person
Jen received a NSERC Undergraduate Research Scholarship to work in our lab and since that time has become indispensible. We think the walls might fall in if she were to leave. Jen's main is job is to keep Berto on track and she does prep work on cellulose extraction for stable isotopes, occassionally processes tephra samples and mostly works on extracting little bits of water for isotope analysis from very dry permafrost soil samples. She's completing an undergraduate thesis on the latter.