Faculty Research

Dr. Altaf Arain, Associate Professor, Associate Director, School of Geography & Earth Sciences,
Director, McMaster Centre for Climate Change

Hydrolgic Sciences

• Hydro-meteorology and Climatology
• Water, carbon and energy balance of forests
• Climate change impacts on temperate and boreal forests
• Soil-vegetation-atmosphere interaction modeling

Dr. Luc Bernier,
Assistant Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Geochemistry

• Geochemistry
• Geomicrobiology

Dr. Joe Boyce, Associate Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Earth Surface Processes

• Environmental (near-surface) geophysics
• Climate and paleoenvironmental reconstruction using magnetic proxys
• Environmental magnetism, paleomagnetism

Dr. Sean Carey, Associate Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Cold Regions Hydrology

• Hydrology
• Microclimatology

Dr. Vera Chouinard, Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Social Geography

• Disabled women's struggles for inclusion
• Impacts of state policies, laws and regulatory practices on disabled peoples' lives
• Role of gender, class and other social differences in processes of empowerment and marginalisation in society and space

Dr. Paulin Coulibaly, Associate Professor
Jointly in School of Geography & Earth Sciences and Department of Civil Engineering

Hydrologic Sciences

• Water Resources
• Hydroclimatic Modelling and Forecasting
• Climate Variability/Change Impact on Water Resources
• Hydroinformatics: Statistical and Dynamic Data-Driven Methods in Hydrology
• Hydrologic Data Assimilation

Dr. Alan Dickin, Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Geochemistry

My research objective is to reconstruct the geological evolution of the Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield. The Grenville has been the most poorly understood province of the Shield, but Nd isotope mapping (Dickin, 2000) has now identified the major crustal terranes that make up the province. My current research involves detailed mapping of individual terrane boundaries in order to understand their geological history, and thereby reconstruct the accretionary growth of the Shield.

Dr. Carolyn Eyles, Professor, P. Geo
School of Geography & Earth Sciences
Director, Integrated Sciences Program

Earth Surface Processes

• Sedimentation processes and their impacts on environmental systems
• Paleoenvironmental reconstruction in glaciated terrain
• Event stratigraphy in glaciated basins

Dr. John Eyles, University Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Environment & Health, Social Geography

• Health
• The geography of everyday life.
• Comparative analyses of the structures of societies with respect to uses and definitions of space, environment, health care and spatio-social organization.
• Social and spatial characteristics of social and environmental policy and urban planning.

Dr. Richard Harris, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Social Geography

• Housing
• Urban social geography
• Urban historical geography
• Canadian and US cities in the twentieth century, with particular reference to Toronto, Hamilton, New York, Chicago, and Peoria, Ill.

Dr. Pavlos Kanaroglou,
Professor, / Director
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Spatial Analysis

Canada Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and Professor, School of Geography and Earth Sciences. His research interests include the development of methods in spatial analysis, and the application of such methods to urban transportation and to understanding the relationship between environmental pollution and health

Dr. Sang-Tae Kim, Assistant Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Geochemistry

• Stable Isotope Geochemistry
• Marine Geochemistry
• Aqueous Geochemistry
• Cosmochemistry
• Chemical Oceanography

Dr. Michael Mercier,
Assistant Professor
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Social Geography

• urban historical geography (the historical development of the modern city)
• geography of health
• urban social geography
• the patterns and determinants of childhood mortality in Canadian cities in the past

Dr. Suzanne Mills Assistant Professor
Labour Studies Programme,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Social Geography

• Geographies of indigenous peoples

• Labour geographies

• Environmental geographies pertaining to gender and racialization in resource development.

Dr. William A. Morris, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Earth Surface Processes

• Hyperspectral and Lidar remote sensing applied to mineral and oil exploration
• High resolution photogrammetry, topographic mapping and interpretation
• Borehole navigation, vector magnetics, magnetostratigraphy
• Airborne and ground magnetics and gravity surveys

Dr. K. Bruce Newbold, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,
Director, McMaster Institute for Environment & Health

Spatial Analysis, Environment & Health

• Immigrant settlement and acculturation issues in the US and Canada
• Aging and health
• Immigrant health
• Environment and human health

Dr. Maureen Padden,
Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Environment & Health, Geochemistry

• Stable isotope geochemistry
• Paleoceanography
• Paleoclimatology
• Sedimentary geology

Dr. Antonio Páez, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Spatial Anaylsis

• Spatial analysis and statistics
• Local forms of spatial analysis - Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR)
• Transportation, land use and the spatial distribution of economic activity
• Travel behavior

Dr. Walter Peace, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Social Geography

• Urban planning issues in Hamilton
• Cultural resource management
• Architecture and urban form

Dr. Eduard Reinhardt, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Earth Surface Processes

• Micropaleontology (thecamoebians and foraminifera)
• Quaternary Coastal Geology and Sea Level Change
• Catastrophic Event Stratigraphy
• Marine Geoarchaeology
• Isotope Geochemistry

Dr. Ulrich Riller, Professor ,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Earth Surface Processes

• Structural Geology
• Kinematics of deformation in active and fossil orogens: Central Andes (Argentina), Penokean Orogen (Canada)
• Relationship between deformation and melt transport: Pluton and dike emplacement, collapse caldera formation.
• Impact Geology: Central uplift formation in large terrestrial impact structures, generation of impact-induced melt systems (Sudbury, Canada, and Vredefort, South Africa).

Dr. W. Jack Rink, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Geochemistry

My research interests involve luminescence emission and magnetic resonance properties of minerals and biominerals, which are applied to problems in geochronology of the young earth, especially young coastal systems. I mainly use electron spin resonance dating and luminescence dating as tools in this work, but I am also involved in developing better dating methodologies to solve current problems in these areas. My newest area of interest is the use of luminescence properties of minerals to study sand transport in coastal systems, which spans the fields of coastal engineering, landscape evolution, storm recurrence frequency and shipwreck preservation issues in underwater archaeological sites.

Dr. Darren Scott, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Spatial Analysis

• Activity-based approaches to travel analysis and modeling (activity analysis)
• Econometric modeling
• Geographic information systems for transportation (GIS-T)
• Integrated land-use and transportation models
• Object-oriented microsimulation

Dr. Greg Slater, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Geochemistry

• Analytical technique development
  
• Environmental geochemistry          

  Investigations of the sources and fates of organic contaminants
  Investigation and monitoring of contaminant biodegradation/bioremediati

• Biosignatures of microbial communities
  Microbial carbon sources and cycling in extreme environments

Dr. James E. Smith, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences

Hydrologic Sciences, Earth Surface Processes

• Water flow and contaminant transport
• Soil contamination and remediation
• Vadose zone hydrology
• Hydrogeology

Dr. Susan Vajoczki, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,
Director, Centre for Leadership in Learning

• Inquiry learning
• Effective teaching

Dr. James Michael Waddington, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,

Hydrologic Sciences

Dr. Waddington's research in ecohydrology studies the ecological and hydrological processes that underlie the structure and function of wetlands and watershed ecosystems and the distribution, movement, and quality of water.

Dr. Lesley A. Warren, Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,

Geochemistry, Hydrologic Sciences

• Aqueous trace metal geochemistry in contaminated systems such as acid rock drainage, urban areas of the Great Lakes, vadose zone subsurface environments associated with bomb test sites in the US
• Microbial -geochemical linkages involved in key aqueous geochemical processes such as mineral precipitation and dissolution, degradation, sequestration or mobilization of contaminants, fossilization, and weathering

Dr. Allison Williams, Associate Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,

Social Geography

• rural health/care
• health care services/policy
• therapeutic landscapes
• informal/family caregiving
• home/community health care

Dr. Robert D. Wilton, Professor,
Associate Director,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,

Social Geography

• Geographies of disability and mental health
• Geographies of addiction treatment and recovery
• Social geography of cities, with emphasis on processes of exclusion

Dr. Niko Yiannakoulias,
Assistant Professor,
School of Geography & Earth Sciences,

Spatial Analysis, Environment & Health

• Medical and health geography
• Spatial analysis of health and crime
• Agent-based models of human and environment interaction
• Geographic health surveillance