I received my B.A. and M.Sc. from McGill University in Montréal, Québec and my Ph.D. from The University of Toronto.  My M.Sc. focused on the geochemical dynamics of saline spring discharge, whereas my Ph.D. examined microenvironmental conditions and microbe-mineral interactions in cryptoendolithic habitats.  Both projects involved fieldwork in the Canadian high Arctic, specifically Axel Heiberg Island and Ellesmere Island.  I was also fortunate to complete a NASA Planetary Biology Internship between graduate studies, and postdoctoral positions at Western University, McGill University, The University of Texas at Austin, and The University of Kansas.

Credentials:

B.A. Geography, McGill University
M.Sc. Geography, McGill University
Ph.D. Geology, University of Toronto

Research Interests:

Geomicrobiology is the study of interactions between microorganisms and their natural surroundings. Microorganisms are ubiquitous in the natural environment, occurring in any habitat where there is sufficient energy, water, and nutrients for survival and growth.  Their abundance in the biogeosphere, along with their innumerable metabolic pathways, make them powerful geochemical forces that greatly impact local surroundings through direct and indirect energy and chemical exchanges that can be observed as the cycling of elements, the transformation of rocks and sediments, and dissolution and precipitation of minerals.  As such, geomicrobiologists explore the diversity of these microbial communities and their habitats so as to better recognize the magnitude to which their activity influences natural systems and their implication in changing the Earth’s landscape.

The goal of my research is to understand geomicrobiological and biogeochemical dynamics in aquatic and terrestrial habitats, chemical activity and interactions at the microbe-mineral interface, and resulting impacts on the natural environment through examination of both microorganisms and associated biomaterials and biomarkers.  This work includes both fieldwork and laboratory experiments that cover disciplines in geomicrobiology, low-temperature geochemistry, molecular biology, and hydrogeology. I am currently developing research projects focusing on the impact of climate warming on the terrestrial landscape of the Arctic.
 

Curriculum Vitae (pdf, 211kB)

External Profile

The Queen’s community is remembering Professor Emeritus Eric Moore, a long-time member of the Department of Geography and Planning and former associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies, who died March 10, 2023, at the age of 83.

Growing up in England, Dr. Moore earned a B.A. (Hons) from Cambridge University in 1962 and in 1966 received a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Dr. Moore began his academic career at Northwestern University. By the time he arrived at Queen’s in 1973, Dr. Moore had already established himself as one of the world’s leading experts on residential mobility and the application of statistical models in human geography. Together with other recent arrivals Maurice Yeates, Brian Osborne, Peter Goheen, Rowland Tinline, and Barry Riddell, Dr. Moore and his colleagues quickly established the Department of Geography as one of the top programs in Canada and internationally. Dr. Moore served as department head from 1989-1992, before a term as the associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies from 1993-2001.

For most of his career, the focus of Dr. Moore’s research was on the geography of population and its implications for public policy concerns. In its early stages this work involved residential mobility and housing adjustments. Later, Dr. Moore’s research shifted to ways in which the Canadian population ages in different geographic environments in Canada, and the implications for the delivery of health and social services.  

As a professor, Dr. Moore inspired generations of graduate students to go beyond what many of them believed they might achieve. Many of his former students became academics in major universities in Canada, the United States, and internationally. Other graduate students went on to highly successful careers, playing leadership roles in their universities and the public and private sectors. Dr. Moore will be remembered not only for his academic achievements, but also for how much he cared about his colleagues, students, and staff, and their welfare.

Dr. Mark Rosenberg
Professor Emeritus
Geography and Planning, Queen's University

John Meligrana teaches topics in legal and governmental processes, environmental planning and computer-aided design at Queen's University. He has also taught at California State University, Bishop's University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia. John has several years of experience working as a planning consultant on a number of projects for both public and private clients.

John has published on a wide variety of topics concerning local government reform, most recently Redrawing Local Government Boundaries: An International Study of Politics, Procedures and Decisions (UBC Press).

John manages SURP's student exchange and internship program with Fudan University in Shanghai and China's Ministry of Land and Resources in Beijing. Each year, up to four SURP students have the opportunity to participate in the exchange program with Fudan University or the Internship with the Ministry of Land and Resources. John has also coordinated a two-week intensive training program in land use planning for approximately forty government officials from China's Ministry of Land and Resources for the past four years.

John was born and grew-up in Toronto. He has lived and worked in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and California. He is very pleased to have returned to Kingston and contribute to the SURP community as a faculty member.

Credentials:

• B.A. (Toronto)
• M.PL. (Queen's)
• Ph.D. (Simon Fraser)
• MCIP, RPP

Links:

Connect with John Meligrana on LinkedIn

Research Interests:

John Meligrana's research projects can be grouped into two main research directions.

One, he has published extensively on local government institutions and how they respond to urban growth and development, especially within the rural-urban fringe. In particular, John is interested in how local governments attempt to change their municipal territorial limits in response to fringe growth and development. Some of his publications can be found in Environmental and Planning A, Urban Studies and Urban History Review.

Two, John has recently begun to investigate topics in environmental management and urban planning in the People's Republic of China. He has partnered with the Institute of Biodiversity Science at Fudan University in Shanghai to investigate such topics as the relationship between water quality and urbanization, urban planning and development, and trends in public participation in urban planning. His China publications can be found in the journals Nature, Environment International, and Urban Studies. He has also co-authored numerous policy reports for the Chinese government particularly from projects funded by the Canadian International Development Agency's Public Policy Options Project.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 155 kB)

Black Geographies, Theories of Anti-Colonialism and Race, Cultural Geographies, the Arts

Cross-appointed from the Department of Gender Studies.

• Faculty Member Profile

My principal research interests are in governance, policy, human resource requirements, education and training, professional practices and products in geodesy, mapping and charting and land administration with particular emphasis on national mapping and cadastral organizations in Canada and abroad. I have provided consultancies to the governments of Canada, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Kenya, Romania, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, The Maldives, Serbia and Nepal; to the city of Kanpur, UP; and to a private company in Ukraine. I have also been a consultant to the World Bank on aspects of land administration in Moldova and Ukraine.

Cross-appointed from the Department of Global Development Studies.

• Faculty Member Profile

The Queen’s community is remembering Dr. J. Harry McCaughey, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography and Planning, who passed away on Friday, May 1, 2020. He was 76.

Harry was born in Limavady, Northern Ireland and received his undergraduate degree (BSc) from Queen’s University, Belfast. He received both his MA and PhD degrees from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Harry joined the Department of Geography at Queen’s University in 1971 where he specialized in climatology research and teaching. He retired June 30, 2012 and was granted the title of Professor Emeritus.

During his time at Queen’s University (Kingston) Harry served on numerous committees both on and off campus. Some of those included: International Review Panel for the Swedish Natural Science Research Council; Review Panel for Climate Change Action Fund in the area of Adaptation and Impacts (Forestry); The BERMS Science Committee; the Science Committee and the Board of Directors of Fluxnet-Canada; and the Operational Science Committee of the Canadian Carbon Program. In the department, Harry served a year as Acting Head (1984-85) and many times chaired the RTP Committee, Safety Committee and served on the Undergraduate Committee. Harry was also cross-appointed to the School of Environmental Studies.

Harry was a pioneer and leader in the micro-climate and eddy covariance research communities. In 2003 he received the NSERC 25 Years of Excellence in Research certificate in recognition of twenty-five years of continuous funding support from NSERC.

Harry mentored and graduated many graduate students who fondly remember him. One of his former students, Dave Branson, reflects: “Harry had an immense impact on my education and preparing me for my future jobs. As an undergrad it was always a challenge to keep up with his lectures. He would be writing frantically on the acetate for the overhead projector and in a split second that acetate would be gone and he would be onto the next. In Grad School, I could not have had a better supervisor. Although he was meticulous about our writing and would send back drafts full of edits and comments, he was also sure to keep us on schedule. RIP Harry!”

Another former Geography graduate student, Rene Barendregt, recalls, “I really enjoyed Harry as a professor. Much of what he taught me about weather and climate I still use in my lectures. Most mornings when I wake up and look to the sky, I try to understand the day’s weather. Often I am reminded of Harry’s descriptions of sky conditions and clouds and what these might be telling us! Harry was a very practical man, and that appealed to this young Alberta farm kid trying to work his way through a Ph.D. in Geography at Queen’s University.”

Harry was predeceased by his wife Stephanie McCaughey (nee Hasant) in 2016 and is survived by his daughter Tara McCaughey (Wayne Bennett) and their children and his son Bryce McCaughey. 

I received my B.Sc. from Queen's University, Belfast and completed both my M.A. and PhD at McMaster University, Hamilton. I have been at Queen's University, Kingston since 1971, teaching courses in microclimatology, climate change, instrumentation and data management.

I am currently a member of the scientific review panel on exogenic processes for the Earth Sciences Committee of the Swedish Natural Science Research Council.

Credentials:

• B.Sc. (Queen's, Belfast)
• M.A., Ph.D.. (McMaster, 1972)

Research Interests:

My research in boundary layer climatology in the past six years has focused on forest-atmosphere interactions in respect to carbon, water and energy exchanges. I was a Principal Investigator in the Fluxnet-Canada Research Network (FCRN) and am associated with the Groundhog River Flux Station in Ontario and the Boreal Ecosystem Research and Monitoring Sites (BERMS) Flux Station in Saskatchewan. I am a Principal Investigator for the follow-on to the FCRN, the Canadian Carbon Program, funded for the period 2007-2010, by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS). I was a co-investigator in the Canadian Climate Research Network, Land Surface Processes Group (the CLASS Project). I was a Principal Investigator in the BERMS program before its incorporation into the FCRN in 2002.

Contributions to the Training of Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP)

Over the past six years, the HQP who have worked with me include four doctoral students (three graduated, one in study), three masters students (two graduated, one in study), one PDF, eight technicians, seven undergraduate summer RA’s, and one graduate field assistant. The undergraduate RA's who have worked on my projects in the summer, usually assist with field deployment of equipment or with various laboratory duties, including testing of equipment, building sensors, or database entry. The technicians perform a range of duties including field operations, data management, and post-processing eddy covariance and meteorological data.

Other Evidence of Impact and Contributions

• February 2000: Member of five-person International Review Panel for the Swedish Natural Science Research Council (NFR). The panel was charged with review of proposals on exogenic geochemistry and exogenic processes.
• March 2000: Member of three-person Review Panel for Climate Change Action Fund in the area of Adaptation and Impacts (Forestry)
• April 2000: Member of the BERMS Science Committee.
• April 2002-March 2007: Member of the Science Committee and the Board of Directors of Fluxnet-Canada.
• April 2007-present: Member of Operational Science Committee of the Canadian Carbon Program.
• September 2003: Received the NSERC 25 Years of Excellence in Research certificate in recognition of twenty-five years of continuous funding support from NSERC.

I received all of my degrees from the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto, gradually moving from forest operations to wood chemistry, to pulp and paper science, and ultimately to advanced forest products including energy production. Along the way I became very interested in the policy aspects of both environmental management and technology development. From 2001-2003, I held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, where I focused on the environmental aspects related to human security in the global context. From 2003 until 2008, I was a Research Associate in the Forest Products Biotechnology group at UBC, where I was involved in the development of new bioenergy and biofuel technologies – both in Canada and around the world. My main area of focus was exploring policy tools to evaluate the efficiency of new energy systems, and to deploy these types of technologies in commercial application. Much of this work was done in conjunction with the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). I have been at Queen’s University since 2008 and currently hold an appointment in the Department of Geography and Planning.  I am also the Executive Director of the School of Policy Studies and an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's University.  I have a cross-appointment to the School of Environmental Studies. I am currently the Director of the Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy.

Credentials:

• B.Sc.F., M.Sc.F., Ph.D. (Toronto, 2001)

Links:

• SBC
• Task 39

Research Interests:

My research focuses on the interface between renewable energy policy and technologies, with particular emphasis on wood energy and biofuels. This means that my students and I work across a broad spectrum that covers environmental policy, international approaches to renewable energy development, and commercialization of new products and processes. A major research project that we have undertaken at Queen’s is an evaluation of renewable energy opportunities and challenges specific to Eastern Ontario, which we have proposed as Canada’s first Renewable Energy Region. This will allow us to take a case study approach in examining policy for renewable energy options, and will provide a framework for expert advice to both federal and provincial governments on the development of strategies to reduce our reliance upon fossil energy sources. This research approach builds on international examples, in Sweden, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere, of successful regional strategies to develop renewable energy solutions. My research program is strongly connected to the activities of the International Energy Agency’s Bioenergy Task 39 ‘Liquid biofuels’, which offers us an avenue to explore different approaches to new energy systems, and gives my students a window to the world of international technology and policy development. We are also engaged in partnerships with our neighbours in the USA, through mechanisms including the IEA and the Great Lakes Sustainable Energy Consortium. At Queen’s, I am closely associated with the Sustainable Bioeconomy Centre (focused on technology solutions to drive the bioeconomy forward) and Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy (focused on a portfolio of environmental and energy-related issues).

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 499 kB)