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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.

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