Jennifer van Wijngaarden, professor of chemistry at �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Science, has been named a fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada (CIC), a prestigious recognition awarded to members who have made outstanding contributions to the field of chemical sciences. 

This distinction acknowledges her impact across multiple areas, including scientific research, mentorship and public outreach.

The CIC fellowship is a senior class of membership reserved for individuals who have demonstrated excellence in scientific and technical contributions, service to the CIC and its affiliated societies, leadership in science and engineering management and efforts in education and public awareness. Fellows are selected through a rigorous nomination and peer-review process before being approved by the CIC Board. 

Van Wijngaarden’s internationally recognized research employs cutting-edge spectroscopic techniques in the microwave and infrared regions to explore molecular structures and dynamics. Her work has advanced the understanding of short-lived molecular species relevant to astrochemistry, combustion and chemical vapour deposition. 

Her research directly supports global sustainability efforts by contributing to advancements of two key United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy; and SDG 13 – Climate Action. 

Beyond her research, van Wijngaarden has made significant contributions to the chemical sciences community. She has played a pivotal role in the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) through positions on the accreditation committee, including as a Physical, Theoretical and Computational Division executive and as director of conferences on the board. She has also provided leadership on scientific grant evaluation panels and governance roles with Canada’s largest national science facility, the Canadian Light Source. 

“I am deeply honoured to be recognized as a CIC fellow,” says van Wijngaarden, who also serves as the Chair of York's Department of Chemistry. “Scientific progress is driven not only by research but also by collaboration, mentorship, and knowledge-sharing. I am grateful for the opportunities to contribute to the CIC community and to help inspire the next generation of scientists.”

Courtesy of YFile

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This March, �첥��Ƶ is recognizing and participating in , a national initiative to advance collaboration, awareness and engagement around the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Throughout the month, YFile will present a series of articles that highlight contributions from �첥��Ƶ and its efforts to advance the SDGs. These stories reflect the people, research and initiatives that make the University an international leader in sustainability.

�첥��Ƶ has launched a new academic partnership with Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China, establishing an international pathway for graduate studies in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

The 3+1+1 program – named for its structure – allows students to complete three years of undergraduate study at Jiangnan, followed by a fourth year (the first “+1”) at �첥��Ƶ focused on academic preparation and research skills, and a fifth year (the second “+1”) dedicated to earning a master’s degree.

The program is designed to attract high-performing students from Jiangnan University’s mathematics and applied sciences programs. These students, selected for their academic excellence, will join York’s academic community during their fourth year to bridge their undergraduate education with the demands of graduate-level study. While the program primarily targets Chinese students from Jiangnan, it also offers opportunities for cross-cultural engagement with Canadian peers during their time at York.

“This isn’t just about moving students between two institutions,” says Hugo Chen, director of International Collaborations and Partnerships at York. “It’s about building an academic bridge that equips students with the tools to thrive in research-intensive environments and prepares them to make meaningful contributions in their fields.”

The transition year at York is central to the program’s design. Students take courses in advanced mathematics, research methodologies and academic communication skills while adapting to an English-speaking academic environment. Faculty mentorship plays a key role during this period, helping students navigate York’s research-focused learning culture and develop the skills needed for graduate-level work. By the end of this year, they are fully prepared to enter one of York’s master’s streams: Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Probability and Statistics or Data Science.

The fifth year allows students to specialize in areas that align with both academic inquiry and industry demand. The Data Science stream, for example, equips students with computational and statistical expertise sought after in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantitative finance.

“The program is designed not just to prepare students for academia, but also to position them as leaders in fast-evolving industries,” says Chen.

Jiangnan University nominates candidates based on their academic performance, and York conducts a final review to ensure all applicants meet its rigorous admission standards. “We hold all our graduate students to the same expectations,” Chen explains. “This ensures consistency in quality across all our programs.”

Discussions are already underway about expanding this model to other departments within York’s Faculty of Science or exploring similar agreements with additional international institutions.

Chen says: “International collaborations allow us to create pathways that benefit not only individual students but also advance research and innovation on a global scale.”

Courtesy of YFile

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Three �첥��Ƶ researchers who are advancing public health by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of drug and vaccine development are being honoured with the Synergy Award for Innovation by the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

The Synergy Award, which recognizes partnerships in natural sciences and engineering research and development between universities and industry in Canada, was given to professors Jianhong Wu, Sergey Krylov and Derek Wilson.

Each is a leader in their field. Wu is a research professor and York Research Chair in Industrial and Applied Mathematics as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Fields Institute. Krylov is a Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry and a professor of chemistry. Lastly, Wilson is a York Research Chair in Chemistry, as well as an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry within the Faculty of Science, in the research stream.

The three professors received the Synergy Award in recognition of their pursuit of work addressing challenges in early-stage drug development by providing the health economic data needed for informed decision-making in pharmaceutical markets. In its award announcement, NSERC described their work as being at the forefront of efforts to revolutionize drug and vaccine development and distribution.

“Through innovative bioanalytical technologies and mathematical models, the team’s research has significantly accelerated the drug development process, offering new insights into vaccine risks, deployment strategies and uptake patterns,” stated an . “This pioneering approach not only supports Canada’s biomanufacturing sector but has also influenced strategies for industrial partners internationally.”

The story also noted that the researchers’ collaboration with industry partners, including Sanofi Canada, underscores the value of interdisciplinary partnerships in advancing public health.

Each researcher will receive a $200,000 NSERC research grant to continue their work. In future, the team intends to help meet global health challenges by streamlining pharmaceutical innovation through faster, more cost-effective development of vaccines and therapeutics.

“We congratulate the �첥��Ƶ team for their extraordinary contributions to public health,” said Amir Asif, vice-president research and innovation. “�첥��Ƶ is committed to new discoveries that advance the public good, and this innovative approach to getting drugs and vaccines to the world faster is a perfect example of how our research is creating positive change at a global scale.”

The NSERC awards were part of six national prizes announced. To learn more about the other prizes, visit .

Courtesy of YFile

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Three New Frontiers in Research Fund-International grants, with additional $3.2 million from partner countries, to support climate change adaptation and mitigation research in Global South, Scandinavia and Canadian Arctic

Today, the Canadian government announced the 2023 results of the New Frontiers in Research Fund grants (NFRF), including $6.1 million for three �첥��Ƶ-led research collaborations that will focus on how vulnerable communities – including those in Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, the Philippines, Rwanda, Scandinavia, and Canada’s Arctic region – could mitigate or adapt to climate change.

“Climate change and its various economic and social impacts are observed globally. By supporting game-changing interdisciplinary research and fostering international collaboration for innovative projects, our government is committed to finding innovative solutions that could have a significant impact on some of the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, announcing $60 million allocated across 32 research teams through the International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Competition, during an event at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Research funders from Brazil, Germany, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, collaborated on the initiative. Together, more than $30 million in additional funding was contributed to the research projects by the international funders, according to a Canada Research Coordinating Committee .

“Today’s funding announcement highlights our country’s commitment to support international research collaborations led by Canadian academic leaders like �첥��Ƶ researchers who engage in incredibly important global projects,” says Amir Asif, �첥��Ƶ’s vice-president research and innovation. “I thank Canada and other funding partner countries for their support, and I commend York’s research community for their continued commitment to tackling the most significant threat to our planet and the future of humanity, climate change.”

The projects will examine how changing sea ice and snow conditions in Northern Canada and Alaska are affecting the lives of Indigenous Peoples; how coastal communities in Bangladesh, Ghana and the Philippines can be negatively affected by climate change adaptation programs; and how support for good governance practices can halt biodiversity decline and accelerate nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation in Central America and East Africa.

BioCAM4 – Biodiversity Integration in Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Actions for Planet, People, and Human Health:

Professor Idil Boran, an expert in applied environmental governance and public policy in the Department of Philosophy and a Faculty Fellow at York’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health, has secured $3.1 million as the principal investigator and lead for the consortium project. This includes $1.6 million in grants from and .

The objective of the project is to develop methodologies for mapping Nature-based Climate Action trends worldwide and assessing local opportunities and challenges through deep-dive studies in two biodiversity hot-spot regions: East Africa and Central America, where vulnerable groups and communities are among the most affected by climate impacts, least responsible for it, and have reduced adaptive capacity due to social and economic fragility.

In partnerships with research institutes, non-governmental organizations, and universities in Kenya, Rwanda, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK, the team will work on outputs to serve as a blueprint for counterparts facing similar risks within low- and middle-income countries. With open-access global databases, toolkits and policy-engagement processes rooted in open and collaborative science principles, the project will generate resources for researchers and practitioners worldwide.

, an ecologist with extensive experience in interdisciplinary research and science policy who served as the director of the Institute for Research Innovation in Sustainability, is the co-principal investigator from �첥��Ƶ. Other York researchers on the project’s core team are Faculty of Health and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies . Environmental and Urban Change , director of York’s Las Nubes Eco-campus in Costa Rica, is one of the collaborating partners.

Climate Change Adaptation, Dispossession and Displacement: Co-constructing Solutions with Coastal Vulnerable Groups in Africa and Asia:

Migration and critical health psychology scholar, , in the Department of Psychology who conducts community-based research in both conflict and environment induced forced migration, will receive $3.1 million, including $1.4 million from the and UKRI for the project, as its principal investigator. in the Department of Equity Studies is a co-principal investigator. She is an interdisciplinary migration and international development scholar and the incoming director of York’s Centre for Refugee Studies, which will host the project.

In partnership with research institutes, universities, and community organizations in Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Norway, Philippines and the UK, the project will focus on gendered processes of displacement, dispossession, and other unintended negative impacts of climate-adaptation projects. Focusing on coastal communities of Bangladesh, Ghana and the Philippines, the team will collaboratively develop an intersectional framework for adaptation and build community-centred interventions to avoid maladaptation.

The team will also co-develop low-tech, mobile phone applications and virtual platforms for communities to share and document their knowledge, strategies, innovations and concerns with one another. These tools can help in sharing local community responses, as well as informing future programming and supporting a collaborative, intersectional, contextualized and equitable framework for adaptation.

Climate changed transportation: holistic and Indigenous informed responses to transportation infrastructure, food security and community well-being in the Arctic:

As the principal investigator, York Research Chair in Global Change Biology Professor Sapna Sharma, the inaugural director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Global Water Academy, whose research interest is in predicting the effects of environmental stressors – such as climate change, invasive species and habitat alteration – on lakes, will receive nearly $3.1 million for the project.

The project will co-develop adaptation measures and technological solutions to decrease the frequency of drownings and accidents in response to hazardous cryospheric conditions for Arctic Indigenous communities, and promote enhanced mobility and food security, in addition to physical and mental health. The main goals of the researchers are to map and forecast safe cryospheric conditions across the Arctic and explore observational and modelling tools to enhance Indigenous capacity in stewarding their land.

With a vision of empowerment, unity and resilience in the face of complex challenges, the research team will co-create knowledge mobilization products for promoting knowledge exchange across generations and communities by transcending transdisciplinary research and community boundaries across the Arctic.

, in York’s Department of Civil Engineering, who studies water resources engineering focusing on research areas including sustainable water-resource management and infrastructure and the impacts of climate change on these systems, and in the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, whose climate-dynamics research has helped to clarify the physical processes driving long-term changes in the atmospheric circulation, with implications on Arctic sea ice motion, are co-applicants on the grant.

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Additionally, FGS nominated Porat for a dissertation prize presented by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS). The CAGS-ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes Canadian doctoral dissertations that make significant and original contributions to their academic field. Winners receive a $1,500 cash prize, a certificate of recognition and an invitation to attend the Annual CAGS Conference.

Jennifer Porat

Jennifer Porat received an FGS Doctoral Dissertation Prize for her thesis, “RNA methyltransferases Influence Noncoding RNA Biogenesis and Function Through Catalytic-Independent Activities.”

Porat’s innovative study encompasses various aspects of ribonucleic acid (RNA) biology – a molecule essential for most biological functions – while focusing on the lesser-studied functions of a set of eukaryotic RNA modification enzymes. The dissertation provides evidence supporting the multifaceted nature of these enzymes and underscores their importance in many fundamental biological processes. The pinnacle recognition of Porat’s scholarly excellence is exemplified by her recent Scaringe Award that acknowledges outstanding achievement of young scientists engaged in RNA research presented by the RNA Society, an international scientific society with more than 1,800 members dedicated to fostering research and education in the field of RNA science.

The examination committee Chair, Professor Emanuel Rosonina, stated that Porat’s work “fundamentally changes how we think about RNA-modifying enzymes.” He continued, “It is not common that a student forges new ground and concepts like this. Hers is among the most impressive PhD theses and defenses that I have seen at York and beyond.”

Nina Garret

Nina Garrett received an FGS Master’s Thesis Prize for her thesis, “Measuring neotropical bat diversity using airborne eDNA.”

Garrett’s thesis develops the novel technique of capturing airborne environmental DNA (eDNA) for the detection of tropical bat species. Garrett successfully demonstrates that airborne eDNA can accurately characterize a mixed-species community with varying abundances and that the type of sampler does not impact DNA concentration or read count. This study was extremely high-risk science because no one had ever attempted this type of work under field conditions with wild animals. At the time she started, there were only three published scientific works in existence demonstrating that airborne eDNA collection was even possible and all had been conducted under extremely controlled and artificial conditions (i.e. in a zoo).

Garrett’s two data chapters were published in PeerJ and Environmental DNA journals. Additionally, she has been acknowledged for her advanced academic and research leadership, having received prestigious awards for her master’s studies, including the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada’s master’s graduate scholarship and recognitions for her research presentations at provincial and national conferences.

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Miles Couchman, a �첥��Ƶ assistant professor in applied mathematics, Faculty of Science, is part of an international research collaboration featuring a multidisciplinary network of researchers – including applied mathematicians and mechanical, civil and environmental engineers – that has been been awarded a highly competitive 2024 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) Supercomputing Award.

The winning collaborative project looks to better understand turbulence in stratified flows, notably scenarios where a fluid has variable density. One application of particular interest is developing more robust mathematical models for characterizing the turbulence-enhanced mixing of heat in the ocean, a leading area of uncertainty in global climate modelling and a topic of direct importance to global society.

The INCITE program, run by the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), grants 75 computational intensive science projects access to the world’s fastest supercomputers, located at the DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories, to further innovation across the fields of science, engineering and computer science.

Couchman’s co-project was among 108 total proposals received by INCITE this year from international researchers or research organizations asking for supercomputer access. The evaluation process was highly competitive, with proposals evaluated over the course of four months based on computational readiness, the scalability of a project’s code and algorithms, and more.

Couchman’s team was awarded use of Frontier, the largest supercomputer in the world, in 2024 to perform numerical research simulations, allowing the researchers to simulate turbulent processes with unprecedented resolution, leading to more accurate and universal turbulent models. They hope what they learn won’t just apply to the mixing of heat in water, but how pollutants mix in the atmosphere and more.

The research team is made up of individuals from Duke University, the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the U.S., as well as the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

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�첥��Ƶ is among a cohort of educational institutions in the province that will champion the use of open educational resources (OER) through a program led by eCampusOntario.

Charlotte de Araujo, assistant professor, Faculty of Science, and Stephanie Quail, acting director of the Libraries’ Open Scholarship Department, were accepted into eCampusOntario’s Open Educational Resources Ranger (OER Ranger) program, an initiative designed to create and develop a network of OER advocates throughout Ontario’s post-secondary institutions.

A non-profit organization, eCampusOntario supports technology-enabled teaching, learning and innovation at Ontario’s publicly funded universities, colleges and Indigenous institutes.

According to eCampusOntario, the OER Rangers will “form a network of educators and practitioners interested in supporting the advancement of open education within their institution and are individuals who are passionate about education as a public good, and who promote OER as a sustainable approach to education.” There will be a total of 84 rangers from 46 Ontario institutions participating in this program.

�첥��Ƶ’s engagement with OER continues to expand and grow, helping faculty advance United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education. OER are openly licensed, freely available educational materials that can be used, accessed, adapted and redistributed with no (or limited) restrictions.

“With each semester, students have shared that purchasing textbooks is sometimes beyond their budget,” says de Araujo. “Being able to provide OERs, whether it is a chapter from a textbook or a worksheet to review information, can be a potential solution to help alleviate cost challenges and also enable students to freely review and revisit course material.”

To help support �첥��Ƶ’s engagement with OER, de Araujo and Quail will host a live Zoom event, Discovering Open Education at �첥��Ƶ, on Thursday, Nov. 23 from 2:30 to 4 p.m. During this event, attendees will learn about the following topics:

• what are open educational resources;
• open licensing basics;
• accessibility considerations and OER; and
• learning more about H5P and Pressbooks – common OER creation tools.

Faculty who are interested in using, adapting or creating OER are encouraged to attend this webinar.

Additionally, faculty who would like to learn about OER in more depth can sign up for the Libraries’ fully asynchronous four-week OER mini-course. This course was initially developed in 2020 for Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) project leads, to help support them in turning a component of their AIF into an OER. Last fall, this course was opened up to all interested faculty and staff at �첥��Ƶ.

“I highly recommend taking the OER mini-course because it helps instructors develop the skills they need to find existing high-quality OER. Incorporating OER into your courses helps provide your students with access to course learning materials from the first day of classes,” says Quail.

The online OER mini-course will begin on Monday, Nov. 20 and will wrap up on Monday, Dec.18. The four-module mini-course covers valuable topics such as:

• OER 101: What is OER? Including examples of OER and how they benefit students and faculty.
• Copyright and Creative Commons licenses: An exploration of the range of open licenses available to creators and how to choose a licence that makes the most sense for their project.
• Finding and evaluating OER: How to find OER for your subject area and evaluate them.
• Create or adapt pre-existing OER: Learn about OER project management techniques, accessibility considerations, and OER tools and platforms.

Quail will teach the Libraries’ OER mini-course this year. .

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Media Release from September 14, 2023

�첥��Ƶ researchers examined the early and late life stages of small developing carpenter bees in the presence and absence of maternal care and were surprised by the results.

Most wild bees are solitary, but one tiny species of carpenter bees fastidiously cares for and raises their offspring, an act that translates into huge benefits to the developing bee’s microbiome, development and health, found �첥��Ƶ researchers.

Not unlike the positive effect human mothers can have on their offspring, the maternal care of these carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata) staves off an overabundance of harmful fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites in the earliest stage of development.

Without maternal care the pathogen load of these developing bees ballooned – 85 per cent of were fungi, while eight per cent were bacteria – which can impact their microbiome, a critical component of bee health, as well as their development, immune system and gene expression. This can lead, for example, to changes in brain and eye development, and even behaviour. The biggest single fungus found was Aspergillus, known to induce stonebrood disease in honey bees, which mummifies the offspring. In later stages, the lack of care can lead to a reduced microbiome, increasing susceptibility to diseases and poor overall health.

The researchers looked at four overall developmental stages in the life of these carpenter bees starting with the larvae stage both in the presence and absence of maternal care.

“There are fitness affects resulting from these fungal infections. We are documenting the shifts in development, the shifts in disease loads, and it is a big deal because in wild bees there is a lot less known about their disease loads. We are highlighting all of these factors for the first time,” says senior author Sandra Rehan, a professor in York’s Faculty of Science.

The developmental changes sparked by which genes were expressed or supressed, upregulated or downregulated, along with disease loads, depending on the presence or lack of maternal care, created knock-on effects on the microbiome and bee health. These single mothers build one nest a year in the pith of dead plant stems where they give birth and tend to their offspring from spring to as late as fall. Anything that prevents the mother from caring for her young, increases risks of nest predation and parasitism, including excessive pruning of spring and fall stems, and can have huge consequences on their young.

The paper, , was published today in the journal Communications Biology. Lead author Katherine Chau of �첥��Ƶ is a Mitacs Elevate and Weston Family Foundation Microbiome Initiative postdoctoral fellow.

“We found really striking shifts in the earliest stages, which was surprising as we did not expect that stage to be the most significantly changed,” says Chau. “Looking at gene expression of these bees you can see how the slightest dysregulation early in development cascades through their whole formation. It is all interconnected and shows how vital maternal care is in early childhood development.”

This study provides metatranscriptomic insights on the impact of maternal care on developing offspring and a foundational framework for tracking the development of the microbiome. “It is a complex paper that provides layers of data and shows the power of genomics as a tool,” says Rehan. “It allows us to document the interactions between host and environment. I think that is the power of this approach and the new technologies and techniques that we are developing.”

She also hopes it will give people more insight into the hidden life of bees and their vast differences, but also similarities. “Often people see bees as a monolith, but when you understand the complexity of bees and that there are wild bees and managed bees, people are more likely to care about bee diversity,” says Rehan.

Additional authors on the paper are Mariam Shamekh, a former honors thesis student and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Undergrad Student Research Award recipient and Jesse Huisken, a PhD candidate and a NSERC Postgraduate scholarship recipient.

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As Toronto gets hotter, muggier and wildfire smoke increasingly wafts through the atmosphere, researchers at �첥��Ƶ are leading a team of atmospheric scientists in testing the city’s air pollution from their rooftop Air Quality Research Station for six weeks this summer.

Preliminary results show the negative impacts on Toronto’s air quality caused by wildfire smoke. Although Toronto’s air pollution has generally been improving over the past few decades, smoke in the city is reversing these improvements.

The research project, Toronto Halogens, Emissions, Contaminants, and Inorganics eXperiment (), with science lead Associate Professor Cora Young and logistics lead Assistant Professor Trevor VandenBoer, both of �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Science, is designed to analyze areas of uncertainty in the air we breathe to better understand what is contributing to the city's air pollution.

One of the things the team hopes to understand, is how a soupy mix of trace chemicals will sometimes combine to create little understood, new and changing threats that can contribute to worse air quality, including emissions from products we use every day, such as paint and pesticides and even perfume, greenhouse gases, as well as perfluorocarboxylic acids (known as “forever chemicals”), and particulate matter - tiny particles of smoke, dust, pollen, emissions and fumes.

“There is still so much we don’t know about what’s impacting the air we breathe, and until we do, it’s difficult to effectively target contaminants that are affecting our air quality now and into the future,” says Young.

This project is important as it allows us to take a robust look at all the pollutants circulating in the air. The Montreal Protocol was successful in helping to fix the ozone layer above us because we knew what to target, but ground-level ozone and other contaminants can still be an issue, particularly spiking on hot summer days, creating poor air quality which can impact people’s health."

Ground-level ozone forms when nitrogen dioxide mixes with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and sunlight. Although emissions of VOCs from fossil fuels have been declining, consumer and industrial volatile chemical products are an increasing, but understudied, source of VOCs.

THE CIX project is part of an international field campaign – Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas () – across North America organized by the NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with projects in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, as well as Toronto. NOAA and NASA launched their massive air quality research summer campaign today with scientists from NOAA, NASA and 21 universities from three countries. State-of-the-art instruments are being deployed in multiple, coordinated research campaigns this month, including at �첥��Ƶ, to investigate how air pollution sources have shifted over recent decades.

At �첥��Ƶ, researchers from �첥��Ƶ, the University of Toronto, University of York (UK), the University of British Columbia, and Environment and Climate Change Canada are already taking readings from a room packed with unique, sophisticated and highly sensitive equipment – some of which was shipped from the UK and BC – on the roof of the Petrie Science Building on York’s Keele Campus.

The goal of the campaign is to assess air quality across urban centres to understand what is impacting air pollution and how it’s changing. THE CIX team hopes to better understand several areas that contribute to air pollution in the GTA.

In addition to the rooftop measurements, the , a flying science laboratory packed with instruments, will cruise over campus this August to take air quality readings from higher in the atmosphere to compare with the rooftop readings.

Data collected by THE CIX will also be compared with key air pollution observations from the recently launched NASA TEMPO instrument, the first geostationary satellite dedicated to air quality over North America.

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Media release from July 25, 2023

�첥��Ƶ researchers take novel approach to look at history of deep-water oxygen in Lake Erie through insect larvae in lake sediment over last 150 years.

Researchers at �첥��Ƶ went searching for the fossilized remains of small insect larvae called chironomids, found in sediment in Lake Erie, to find a history of deep water oxygen deprivation in the lake that continues today.

“Our results indicate that Lake Erie has suffered declines and depletion of bottom oxygen in the past, including prior to major Euro-American settlements, however, it wasn’t as bad as it is today,” says senior author and Associate Professor Roberto Quinlan. If oxygen continues to decrease, Lake Erie will likely see more algal blooms occurring in the future.

Until now, understanding the oxygen dynamics in Lake Erie was more speculative. The current research, led by former York grad student Dmitri Perlov, is novel in that it looked at how an organism, such as chironomid larvae, which is highly sensitive to changing oxygen levels, was affected over the past 150 years.

The researchers studied the presence of these tiny larvae, which metamorphosize into midges as adults, in lake sediment cores from today to before pre-industrial times. They found oxygen depletion rates ramped up as populations increased and agriculture intensified after industrialization in the 1950s, which was likely exacerbated by the development and increased use of phosphorus-rich chemical fertilizers and household detergents. It was particularly bad in the 1960s and 70s. Water clarity started to improve in the 80s and 90s following phosphorus abatement programs initiated in the early 1970s, but oxygen levels have not recovered.

Poor water quality has a lot to do with the lack of deep-water oxygen, which can spur summer algal blooms that can affect the drinking water for millions of people around Lake Erie, and it also means that when there is a temperature inversion, which sends deep waters devoid of oxygen to the surface, it can cause a massive kill-off of fish, that can have major effects on commercial fishing.

“Of all the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is the most stressed by human influence and has the poorest water quality so it is of great interest to both the United States and Canadian federal governments, and all the state and provincial governments that border the Great Lakes,” says Quinlan of �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Science.

Low oxygen levels at the bottom of the lake can produce a chemical environment where phosphorus, a primary nutrient for algae, is released from the sediments.

“A central pillar of water quality research is trying to control phosphorus. If you get a lake that loses its oxygen and all of this stored phosphorus is released from the sediments, all of these efforts by governments and society to control phosphorus, it’s all undone by this chemical process that releases a huge amount of phosphorus back into the water and fuels algal blooms,” says Quinlan.

This creates conditions for algal blooms, including harmful cyanobacterial blooms, which turns the water blue-green, makes it smell and taste bad, and can be toxic to humans, pets and livestock, making tap water unsafe to drink.

“Our study’s results emphasize the vulnerability of Lake Erie to low oxygen because it naturally had periods of low oxygen prior to large scale European settlement, urbanization, industrialization, agricultural fertilizers and all these additional stressors that make Lake Erie that much more vulnerable to low oxygen,” says Quinlan.

Climate change is what really concerns Quinlan. A warmer climate means warmer winters and shorter ice coverage as well as warmer summers which causes a further loss of oxygen in the deep layers.

“Climate warming is already underway, and this is something that will take decades to reverse,” he says.

Some 13.2 million people live within the Lake Erie watershed, the most populated of the Great Lakes, representing about 34 per cent of the total population in the Great Lakes catchment area.

Lake Erie is a bellwether for other Great Lakes as it has changed the most in response stress and remediation. The researchers say that wide-scale watershed actions are needed if Lake Erie’s water quality and deep-water oxygen levels are to improve.

The paper, , was published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research.

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