Research

After earlier careers in soil survey, consulting, and forest soils research, I joined UNBC in 2002. I am still involved in several of the long-term forestry research projects that I helped to establish during my eleven years with the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. At UNBC, my research now emphasizes soil genesis and the role of soils as a recorder of long-term environmental change in northwestern Canada. With collaborators at UNBC and other universities, and at federal and territorial agencies, I'm working on research projects at sites in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, and in northern British Columbia.

Soil Genesis and Quaternary Research

• Soil formation in the Nahanni karst landscape, Northwest Territories
• Paleosols in perennially frozen sediments in the Klondike goldfields
• Interactions between loess deposition, fire and slope processes in southwestern Yukon forest-grassland mosaics
• Soil formation on weathered bedrock in the unglaciated Klondike plateau: implications for mineral exploration geochemistry
• Ecological roles of biological soil crusts in British Columbia and Yukon grasslands
• Holocene fire regimes of the inland temperate rainforest, east-central British Columbia

Forest Soils and Forest Site Productivity

• Nitrogen fixation in Sitka alder shrub understories
• Sulphur nutrition and fertilization of lodgepole pine
• Rehabilitation of forest landings and roads, and petroleum wellsites
• Long-term impacts of forest practices on site productivity

See the Picture Galleries on this site for more information about some of these research projects.