A little bit about my background ...
People looking at my CV would probably call me a seabird biologist, or if you look back a bit further, a waterfowl biologist. In fact, I tend to think of myself as an environmental scientist with broad research interests. I certainly do have a soft spot for birds (how can you not?!), but I've worked on everything from water chemistry to remote sensing.
I conducted my undergraduate studies at Queen's University (Kingston, ON), and my M.Sc. and Ph.D. at Carleton University (Ottawa, ON). I spent the first 15 field seasons of my professional career studying the effects of acid rain on aquatic food webs in central Ontario with the Canadian Wildlife Service. In 1999, my family and I moved to Iqaluit, Nunavut, where I spent 12 years as a habitat and seabird biologist, still with the Canadian Wildlife Service, working across the magnificent Canadian Arctic.
In 2011, I left the government to start work at Acadia University as the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Coastal Wetland Ecosystems, where I studied ecology and environmental stressors on Arctic and Maritime coastlines. In 2019, I was promoted to a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Coastal Ecosystem Resilience and Connectivity, which has a similar vein of research as my Tier II work but with additional emphasis on social science, and more of a focus on Atlantic Canada. With my collaborators, I conduct research in a variety of disciplines, including behavioural ecology, environmental pollution, climate change, movement ecology, natural history, paleoenvironmental analyses, and local ecological knowledge.
(OK, if I had to be honest, my particular passion, other than my family and 1975-85 Springsteen albums, still lies with Arctic seabirds ... as well as some classic folk music like Gord Lightfoot ... )
Some insights: a super song-writer and colleague of mine, David Newland, wrote the following ...
Mallory's Passion
an Icelandic Limerick Saga by David Newland
An indecent obsession with birds
Defies all description in words
A folly, a fashion
Call it "Mallory's Passion"
May yet be the death of some nerds
In the lee of Prince Leopold Island
Mark Mallory cried, behold MY land!
There, my flocks on the rocks
There, my home in a box
Precariously perched on the highland
The passengers murmured and mumbled
And with hefty binoculars fumbled
All for the sake
Of a few kittiwake
And perhaps the odd murre as it tumbled
Fulmars were glimpsed, and a raven
And other birds boorish, and craven
Gulls of the glaucous sort
With cries of the raucous sort
Of which Mallory's known as a maven
But the wind that was Franklin's cold curse
Blew on our birders much worse
They uttered some words
About birds and their turds
That I dare not include in this verse
The weather grew snowy and storming
It seemed that a blizzard was forming
And fleeing the decks,
With scarves round their necks
The passengers cried out for warming
How they begged for a film, or a lecture-
Even half-baked concepts and conjecture
Anything but the sight
Of that godawful height
Pull the screen down, start the projecture!
To heck with ornithological
Narration so damn demagogical
We're all going stiff
Under Leopold's cliff
Just for glimpses of things ecological...
Mallory's passion's illogical!
If you are interested in coming to Acadia, or collaborating on work, please contact me.