GRADUATE STUDIES

Graduate Studies Opportunities

The Erosion Research Group (ERG) at Trent University is seeking graduate students to conduct either M.Sc. or Ph.D. thesis research investigating topics related to surficial and atmospheric control of wind erosion and dust emission. Our group currently consists of one Professor, one post-doc, one research assistant, one lab manager and technician, and three graduate students. During your graduate studies, you will acquire hands-on experience with state-of-the-art boundary-layer flow and particle tracking instrumentation in Trent's Environmental Wind Tunnel (TEWT), one of the leading facilities world-wide dedicated to the study of sediment transport by wind and dust emissions simulation. Detailed information about this facility is available on the website listed above. Each year, more than 3 billion tonnes of dust are transported in the Earth's atmosphere. Sources include sand and dust storms in arid and semi-arid regions, volcanic eruptions and anthropogenic sources (e.g. agriculture, mining and construction). Wind erosion depletes fines that are rich in nutrients and contributes to desertification. Dust is a major source of aerosols which impact climate and weather, and in some instances, adsorb and transport chemical contaminants. Recent theses completed by graduate students working in our group address the protective role of salt and biotic crusts, wind pumping of dust particles from nickel slag (a waste product of smelter operations), and slope failure on dunes.If your academic interests are multi-disciplinary, you are a technician at-heart and get your kicks out of learning to work with the latest technology, you enjoy being creative and inventing things, and foremost, you are a team player and have a fun attitude, then wind tunnel simulation work is definitely for you.

Some of the projects that will be underway shortly in our lab address:

• Particle collision with non-erodible roughness elements; armouring; ventifaction

• PTV analysis of particle trajectory adjustment within saltation clouds sampled over analogue surfaces (e.g. soil crusts, wet and frozen sedimentary deposits)

• Emission, dispersion and deposition of particulate matter (PM) of varied origin (e.g. mine tailings, resuspended volcanic ash, playas)

• Entrainment, transport and deposition of microplastic particles.

Any one of these is suitable for graduate research, while work on other similar projects will begin over the next two years. Financial support for your graduate studies will be provided through a combination of research (NSERC supported) and graduate teaching assistantships. Applicants may apply for admission in September, January or May. An undergraduate degree in any of the following disciplines is considered appropriate preparation for work in the wind tunnel lab: physical geography, geology, meteorology, environmental science, engineering or physics. Good command of the English language is absolutely essential. For consideration, please send an email outlining your interests and any questions that you might have in advance of your formal application directly to: cmckneuman@trentu.ca

Students are invited to apply to either: 1) the Environmental Life Sciences Graduate Program (ELS), or 2) Applied Modelling and Quantitative Methods Graduate Program (AMOD). ELS is an interdisciplinary program aimed at enhancing our understanding of the natural world - the implications of environmental change for living things and the dynamics of organisms in their natural surroundings. The program welcomes applications from students with interests in physical geography, inclusive of geomorphology, climatology, soil science, hydrology and GIS. AMOD is an interdisciplinary program in the application of techniques and theory of modelling. It encompasses the following traditional disciplines: Geography, Environmental Science, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, and Psychology. This is a discipline based program and is not a program in applied mathematics.