Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources

Our Researchers

Environment and Geography

Doctor. michael campbell.

Dr. Michael Campbell

I study how nature‑based tourism and outdoor recreation interact with physical, biological, and social environments, with a strong focus on reducing human impacts and understanding the human dimensions of wildlife and natural resource management. My work includes extensive experience in Uganda and Tanzania, where I helped develop a Master’s in Wildlife Tourism at Makerere University and supported community tourism initiatives around national parks, as well as collaborations in India and ongoing research with Manitoba Conservation’s “Bear Smart” program. My Ph.D. examined how earth‑science knowledge shapes park interpretation and management, and I’ve since contributed to studies on hunting attitudes in Manitoba and backcountry planning for Riding Mountain National Park. I also run a long‑standing field course in Banff National Park, and my current research explores how pre‑visit media consumption influences visitor satisfaction in nature‑tourism settings.
Dr. alex crawford standing outside.

Dr. Alex Crawford

Extratropical cyclones are large storms that bring rain and snow, strong winds, and abrupt temperature changes to the mid-latitudes and polar regions. One of my main scientific contributions is a set of code that detects and tracks these storms in various datasets. I use the output to study how complex interactions between these storm systems and various components of the Arctic climate system are changing in response to global warming. This involves both how changes to the Arctic surface influences storm development, and how storms influence the Arctic land, ocean, ice, and people. Complementing this research, I also investigate the seasonal timing of when sea ice advances in fall and retreats in summer throughout various regions of the Arctic. The timing of sea ice retreat and advance has major implications for human activities in the Arctic, like hunting and shipping. It also impacts everything from weather events to marine ecology. All my work relies on large datasets like atmospheric reanalysis and fully coupled Earth system models.
a headshot photo of doctor bruce erickson

Dr. Bruce Erickson

I examine the cultural politics of outdoor recreation and tourism, exploring how leisure shapes our relationships with both the social and physical world. Drawing on cultural geography, political ecology, environmental history, psychoanalysis, leisure studies, and critical theory, I use recreational practices as a lens for understanding how ideas about nature—and how it should be used or protected—produce real consequences. A central question in my work is how leisure and recreation contribute to conditions of inequality and conflict, particularly within colonial contexts. In Canada, where colonialism has many dimensions, I show how tourism, environmentalism, and recreational activities have been entangled in structures of dispossession, helping justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands and livelihoods through development, conservation, and everyday outdoor practices.
a headshot photo of doctor catharine hallman

Dr. B. Catharine Hallman

My research interests center around the ways families interact with the spaces and places of everyday life in order to care for and nurture their members. Over my career I have focused on two types of families: those with elders needing care as they age, and those with young children whose parents are building family ties and memories while having fun together in landscapes/places identified as family-friendly. Evolving from this focus on geographies of care-giving, I am interested in therapeutic landscapes and spaces/places of wellness. Most recently I have been exploring so-called 'blue spaces' (open skies and water) and their influences on mental health and wellbeing. Additionally, I have an interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning, specifically in the First Year Transition into university studies.
Doctor mark hanson posing outside in red jacket and baseball cap.

Dr. Mark Hanson

Dr. Hanson is an aquatic ecotoxicologist and ecological risk assessor who focuses on fate and effects of pesticides, wastewater contaminants (e.g., nutrients, pharmaceuticals, microplastics), and unconventional oil. The impacts of these contaminants on non-target species and the ways in which these can influence responses (direct and indirect) observed at the population, community, and ecosystem-level are studied at the laboratory to field-level. The use of mesocosms, model freshwater ecosystems, along with developing new toxicity bioassays in a rapid and effective manner are a core feature of his research program. Dr. Hanson and his team also develop methods to critically evaluate data quality and reporting in the peer reviewed literature for inclusion in risk assessment, including weight of evidence approaches to assign causality.
Dr. stephane mcLachlan and students study a plant in the forest.

Dr. Stephane McLachlan

I focus on environmental justice, environmental health, and Indigenous food sovereignty, working closely with Indigenous communities in Manitoba and around the world to document and challenge the disproportionate impacts of resource extraction industries such as hydropower, forestry, mining, and agriculture. Although I’m formally trained as an environmental scientist, my work is grounded in “two‑eyed seeing,” combining scientific approaches with Indigenous Knowledge, community priorities, and worldviews through applied, holistic, and transdisciplinary research supported by diverse funding agencies. I center Indigenous data and research sovereignty, following OCAP principles, and collaborate with students, post‑docs, technicians, other universities, NGOs, lawyers, and decision‑makers. My research is both solutions‑oriented and advocacy‑based, aiming to support impacted communities, raise public awareness, and contribute to social and political change.
Doctor cj mundy posing outdoors in red toque and parka.

Dr. C.J. Mundy

I am a biological oceanographer who examines physical and biological processes in the pan-Arctic marine ecosystem, with particular focus on primary producers in ice-covered environments. My key research foci are algal ecology, primary production, radiative transfer, and nutrient dynamics in Arctic marine ecosystems. I am also interested in ice-pelagic-benthic coupling processes. Data collection in support of this research is strongly field oriented, accessing the Arctic Ocean via sea ice camps or research vessels, including the RV William Kennedy, for which I am Chief Scientist. My research has helped develop new observational techniques for the sea ice environment, greatly advanced research on the development of under-ice phytoplankton blooms, and revealed key processes underlying ice algal production and their response to a climate change influenced icescape.
Doctor Tim Papakyriakou standing behind a solar panel.

Dr. Tim Papakyriakou

My research examines cycles of carbon, heat and water in high latitude aquatic and marine environments. The motivation is to better understand greenhouse gas emission budgets, and factors that moderate the gas budgets in these systems. The geographic focus of research extends from local inland waters, like Lake Winnipeg, to Arctic coastal seas, and consequently a major theme of my research examines how carbon is cycled within and between nodes that connect in-land waters to the coastal ocean, and effects of river water and associated delivery of carbon and nutrients on the carbon cycling within the downstream marine environment. The research is multidisciplinary, with a strong field component. I use micrometeorological techniques, like eddy covariance, to characterize the exchange of gases (e.g., CO2, CH4, H2O) and heat between the aquatic/marine ecosystem and overlying air, and I make use of shore-based stations, boats and ships for measurements and water sampling.
Doctor david walker in blue shirt against orange background.

Dr. David Walker

Dr. David Walker is a quantitative terrestrial ecologist that specializes in geomatics and wildlife conservation. His principal teaching commitments are in environmental mapping, geospatial technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and wildlife management. The courses he teaches have a strong experiential component in lab and field exercises and he assists in the delivery of several environmental field courses. He has research programs in the Canadian boreal forest focusing on environmental impacts of hydroelectric development on wildlife species such as caribou, and in temperate grassland landscapes focusing on invasive species, ecosystem health and wildlife conservation. He has worked on international conservation and development projects in the tropics and sub-tropics, promoting health, sustainability and environmental education.

Earth Sciences

Dr. Kirstin Brink

Doctor alfredo camacho standing in front of some mountains.

Dr. Alfredo Camacho

I am interested in the theoretical and practical use of geochronology to establish cooling histories and the rates of tectonic processes. I study the spatial and temporal relations among shearing and fluid flow in subducting zones where rapid burial advects cold material into the mantle by addressing the following questions:


1. What are the characteristics of the fluids and where do they originate?
2. Can phase transformations occur under dry conditions or is a fluid always required?
3. What are the durations of thermal pulses associated with the advection of heat by fluids or shear heating?
4. Are exhumation histories diagnostic of the burial process; i.e., are the cooling data, typically collected from metamorphic terranes that represent rapidly subducted crust, unique?


Because I rely on the isotopic system to constrain duration, I am also interested in addressing the fundamental processes that affect isotopic ages, including: geological conditions that influence the mobility of isotopes, chemical factors that control the retentivity of minerals, diffusion mechanisms, and partitioning of isotopes between minerals.
Anton r. chakhmouradian outdoors leaning on rocks.

Dr. Anton Chakhmouradian

I study the petrogenesis, geodynamic significance and economic potential of exotic alkali- and carbonate-rich rocks derived from the Earth's mantle (carbonatites, kimberlites, nephelinites, etc.). These rocks are one of the most fascinating things created by Nature because they consist of minerals one would not find in common rocks (such as granites), and also because they contain concentrated occurrences of many industrially important elements, including neodymium, niobium and many other critical metals. Using mineralogical, petrological and geochemical research tools, my students, research associates and I explore the sources and evolutionary pathways of these rocks and their parental magms. We then use this information to place alkali- and carbonate-rich rocks in the context of lithospheric evolution and to provide mineral exploration with a better understanding of where critical-metal deposits can be found. Current projects include carbonatites and associated mineral deposits in Manitoba, British Columbia, Ontario, Russia, China, Morocco and Tanzania. As a "research hobby", I am also interested in gemstones and rocks historically used in art and architecture (especially, marble and calc-silicates).
Paul durkin hiking outdoors wearing a backpack hat and sunglasses.

Dr. Paul Durkin

I am the lead investigator for the Rivers to Rocks research group that tackles projects spanning from: (i) the “badlands” of Dinosaur Provincial Park, where they study the evolution of Late Cretaceous rivers and environmental context of dinosaur discoveries; to (ii) the sedimentological impact of extreme flooding on the Assiniboine River in southwestern Manitoba; and (iii) paleoenvironmental reconstructions of hominin habitats in rift-basin sediments of the archeologically significant Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Our research integrates a classic field-based approach with innovative technology and analytical methods, including the use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS). We aim to extract vital information from the sedimentary record to resolve the temporal and spatial context of significant discoveries and time periods in Earth's history.
Andrew frederiksen outside looking at camera with hills behind him.

Dr. Andrew Frederiksen

I am an earthquake seismologist who uses earthquake recordings to obtain structural information about the Earth's interior, with a primary focus on the layers that participate in plate tectonics: the crust and upper mantle. I am interested in understanding how the lithosphere participates in tectonic processes, how the continental lithosphere formed, and how past tectonic events are recorded in lithospheric structure beneath the continents. To do this, I use techniques such as surface and body-wave tomography (which give 3-D images of structure), shear-wave splitting (which detects oriented fabric), and receiver functions (which detect sharp interfaces). I'm also interested in advancing the state of the art of these methods, and have developed a new transfer-function technique that addresses some problems with the receiver function method. I'm also interested in new applications of interferometric methods, which are based on seismic noise rather than earthquakes, and can be used at widely-varying scales from the near-surface to the upper lithosphere.
Doctor zhou zhou kuzyk indoor photo looking at camera.

Dr. Zou Zou Kuzyk

I am interested in the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and other elements in northern coastal and continental shelf areas and how climate and other environmental changes modify those cycles. Coastal marine areas integrate and respond to both changes on the land (river runoff, coastal erosion) and in the marine environment (sea ice, ocean currents). One of my group’s focal areas is studying sedimentation and carbon composition and burial in coastal marine environments. Northern areas are experiencing local hydrological changes, related to hydroelectric development and regulation, and climate-driven changes to hydrological cycles. Proxy records derived from bulk properties and biomarkers in sediment cores and suspended and sinking particulate matter are used to study the sources of particulate matter in rivers and the transport and deposition of these materials within high-latitude continental margin settings. I have worked along the North American Arctic Ocean margin, in the Churchill and Nelson River estuaries in Manitoba, the Lake Melville estuary area in Labrador, and collaborate with researchers in Finland and Greenland. In order to correctly interpret sedimentary records, my group also conducts studies of sedimentation processes and examines the role of particulate matter in controlling the fate of carbon, nutrients and contaminants in coastal and shelf systems. The methods employed in my research are largely geochemical, ranging from isotopic and elemental tracers to specific biomarkers. I contribute to the research management committee of the Network of Centres of Excellence ArcticNet, co-led the Hudson Bay Integrated Regional Impact Study (IRIS), and enjoy working with communities to jointly develop new knowledge that addresses community questions and concerns.

Headshot of dr. ricardo silva

Dr. Ricardo Silva

The Basin, Environment, and straTigraphY — BETY — Lab focuses on the physical, chemical, and biological controls on the production and preservation of organic matter and the role of organic productivity in modulating Earth system processes at geological time scales.

As the group leader, I am especially interested in understanding the complex chain of events, processes, and feedback mechanisms that lead to the so-called oceanic anoxic events (OAEs), meaning brief periods in Earth's history when large parts of the oceans were deoxygenated. OAEs are linked with increased geological storage of organic matter, significant disturbances in several element cycles, as well as climatic and environmental extremes, disruptions to life, and mass extinctions.

I use a broad array of sedimentological, paleontological, palynological, geochemical, and petrophysical tools to study terrestrial and marine depositional systems generally characterized by sediments and sedimentary rocks rich in organic matter. I have expertise in i) sedimentology and stratigraphy, ii) paleontology (ammonite and palyno- biostratigraphy), iii) palynofacies analysis, iv) x-ray photography, diffraction, and fluorescence, including handheld XRF and core scanning Itrax systems, v) isotopic and organic geochemical analysis (EA- TOC and Hg, OM pyrolysis, and EA- and GC-IRMS), vi) SEM and automated mineral analysis (QEMSCAN), vii) petrophysical methods and wireline log analysis, and viii) Petroleum systems modelling. I have worked extensively along the Atlantic Margin (such as the west Portuguese coast, Canary Islands, southwest UK, and offshore Nova Scotia), in the Bay of Fundy (NS), the Betic Cordillera in southern Spain, and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. I closely collaborate with researchers from Morocco, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, the UK, and Canada.

Currently, I am a PI of M-JET – Middle Jurassic Earth System & Timescale and a permanent member of the science team at JET – Early Jurassic Earth System & Timescale. The International Continental Drilling Program funds both groups. I serve as the Chair of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program-Canada and as a counsellor for the Canadian Sedimentological Research Group and the Atlantic Geoscience Society. I am also a member of the International GeoScience Program (IGCP) Project #739, The Mesozoic-Palaeogene hypothermal events.

The BETY Lab is aligned with the principle that science is better when approached from multiple and varied perspectives and experiences. As the group leader, I am fully committed to interrupting the historical pattern of subservice of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and people from disadvantaged backgrounds and ensuring that everyone can reach their full potential and have meaningful and rewarding participation in academia, science, and society.

Natural Resources Institute