Jules Blais studies human impacts on natural environments. His research questions often relate to identifying sources, pathways, and fate of chemicals in different environmental media, and his team uses environmental archives (especially sediment cores) to track historical changes in the environment.
His team is working on new ways to track historical changes using emerging methods in paleoclimatology and paleolimnology, sediment biomarker discovery, stable isotopes, and environmental DNA, among others. His goal is to provide the necessary long-term perspectives in environmental studies to resolve questions related to ecosystem stability, natural variability, and natural vs anthropogenic drivers of ecosystem change.
Selected publications
- Gallant LR, Hargan KE, Kimpe LE, Michelutti N, Grooms C, Savelle JM, Smol JP, Blais JM. 2024. Sedimentary biomarkers and bone specimens reveal a history of prehistoric occupation on Somerset Island (Arctic Canada). Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 291: 20232915. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.2915
- Cheng W, Kimpe LE, Mallory ML, Smol JP, Blais JM. 2021. An ~1,100-year sediment record of Arctic seabird occupation. Geology v. 49: 510-514. https://doi.org/10.1130/G48215.1http://hdl.handle.net/10393/44917
- Rodriguez-Gil JL, Stoyanovich S, Hanson ML, Hollebone B, Palace V, Orihel DM, Black T, Cederwell J, Mason J, Patterson S, Timlick L, Séguin J, Blais JM. 2021. Simulating diluted bitumen spills in boreal lake limnocorrals - Part 1: Experimental design and responses of hydrocarbons, metals, and water quality parameters. Science of the Total Environment 790: 148537.
- Cheney CL, Eccles KM, Kimpe LE, Thienpont JR, Korosi JB, Blais JM. 2020. Determining the effects of past gold mining using a sediment palaeotoxicity model. Science of the Total Environment 718: 137308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137308
- Hargan KE, Gilchrist HG, Clyde N, Iverson S, Forbes M, Kimpe LE, Mallory M, Michelutti N, Smol JP, Blais JM. 2019. Multi-century perspective assessing the sustainability of the historical harvest of seaducks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 116 (17) 8425-8430. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/26/1814057116