Paleolimnology is the science (and art) of reconstructing the past environments of freshwater systems. Join hosts Adam Jeziorski and Josh Thienpont as they wade through the wide variety of topics that make up this interdisciplinary field. Whether you are already an expert at collecting sediment cores and identifying microfossils, or you simply have an interest in environmental issues such as acid rain, eutrophication, and climate change, this podcast will help make the natural records that surround us as clear as mud.
Adam Jeziorski is a research administrator within the Vice-Principal (Research) Portfolio at Queen’s University. However, before making the switch into administration, Adam spent many years at the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Laboratory at Queen’s, initially as a graduate student, and later as a research associate.
Adam’s relationship with paleolimnology began early in his academic career while investigating the legacy of acid rain on lakes of the Canadian Shield. His research focused on the use of paleolimnological techniques to study the responses of aquatic invertebrate communities in temperate lakes to a wide variety of environmental stressors (including acid deposition, calcium decline, metal contamination, and climate warming). Whether to discuss examining calcium decline using cladoceran assemblages or reconstructing long-term trends in dissolved oxygen concentrations from chironomid remains, Adam is always happy to step away from the administrative world and talk mud.
Adam received a B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Canada) in 2001, a M.Sc. in Biology from York University (Toronto, Canada) in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Biology from Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada) in 2011.
Josh Thienpont is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. He co-leads the Limnology and Paleoenvironmental Research Group with Prof. Jenny Korosi.
Josh’s research considers both the legacies of past environmental stressors and emerging concerns for aquatic ecosystems. His current research focuses on understanding how permafrost thaw alters physical, chemical, and biological processes in lakes, in the context of ongoing climate warming. His research regularly makes use of lake sediment records to infer changes to lake ecosystems and the surrounding landscape associated with thermokarst-driven geomorphic disturbances.
Josh completed his B.Sc.H. in Biology at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada) in 2007, as well as his Ph.D. in Biology at Queen’s in 2013. He received a W. Garfield Weston postdoctoral fellowship for northern research, which he completed in the Department of Geography at Brock University. Before joining York, he was a research associate at the University of Ottawa, and taught courses as a contract faculty member at Carleton University, and the University of Toronto. Josh is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.