John Smol


John P. Smol, is a Canadian ecologist, limnologist and paleolimnologist who holds the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change in the Department of Biology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. He founded and co-directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab.

Education

Smol was educated at McGill University, Brock University, and Queen's University.

Career and research

Smol works on a diverse range of subjects, most of which focus on using lake sediments to reconstruct past environmental trends. Topics include: lake acidification caused by acid rain, sewage input and fertilizer runoff, studies of nutrient and contaminant transport by birds and other biovectors, and a large program on climatic change. For about three decades, he has been leading research in the high Arctic, studying the present-day ecology of polar lakes and ponds, and then using paleolimnological approaches to determine how these ecosystems have been changing due to natural and anthropogenic stressors.
The author or editor of 21 books and over 580 journal publications and book chapters, Smol is an international lecturer and media commentator on a variety of topics, but most dealing with environmental issues. From 1987 to 2007, he edited the Journal of Paleolimnology. Since 2004, he has been editor of the journal Environmental Reviews. He is the series editor of the Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research book series. He held the Chair of the International Paleolimnology Association for two three-year terms ending in August 2018, and he is currently President of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada.

Honours and awards

Among over 70 awards and fellowships, he is the recipient of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, given by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to honour Canada’s top scientist or engineer. Smol was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018. He holds six honorary degrees: LLD, St Francis Xavier University ; PhD, University of Helsinki ; DSc, University of Waterloo ; LLD, Mount Allison University ; DSc, Ryerson University ; DSc, Western University . In 2013 he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Selected publications