Colin Cooke, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

Pollution Paleolimnology Monitoring Mercury

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Research

My research revolves around three key themes:

• using natural archives – especially lake sediments – to reconstruct spatial and temporal patterns in the atmospheric deposition of lead, mercury, and other contaminants;
• designing and reporting on environmental monitoring programs with a focus on water and sediment quality; and
• quantifying the timing, rate, and magnitude of ecosystem changes in alpine environments.

Prior to joining the Government of Alberta, my research focused on using lake sediment cores to reconstruct the history of heavy metal pollution in the Andes. My publications revealed the earliest evidence for mercury pollution anywhere in the world, and I worked with archaeologists to geochemically link ores, ancient Andean artifacts, and heavy metal pollution from smelting.

After joining government, I began to focus more on water quality. In 2013, I led the departmental response to the Obed Mountain Mine process water spill into the Athabasca River. At the time this was the largest spill in Canadian mining history, and the scientific evidence we gathered led to one of the largest environmental fines in Canada. In 2015, I joined the Alberta Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Agency (AEMERA) and I took over as lead scientist for the Surface Water Quality component of the Joint Canada-Alberta Oil Sands Monitoring Program. I worked with an amazing team, and together we optimized the monitoring network, published on the atmospheric deposition of heavy metals, and reported the first mercury mass balance for watersheds impacted by oil sands mining, among other initiatives.

After AEMERA was dissolved in 2016, I returned to government where I have led or co-led various provincial scale monitoring programs and research projects. Most recently, this includes serving as lead of Alberta’s core river water quality monitoring network, investigating the environmental impacts of metallurgical coal mining in the Rockies, and, increasingly, looking at the sources, cycling, and fate of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, in streams, lake sediment, and snowpack.

Colin A. Cooke, Kira M. Holland, Craig A. Emmerton, Paul E. Drevnick, Alison S. Criscitiello, Brandi Newton

Environmental Science & Technology. 2024 July; 10.1021/acs.est.4c02596

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Kasia J. Staniszewska, Alberto V. Reyes, Colin A. Cooke

Environmental Science & Technology Letters. 2023 November; 10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00427

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Ecosystems. 2023 January; 10.1007/s10021-022-00745-w

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Environmental Science and Technology. 2022 January; 10.1021/acs.est.1c06791

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2022 January; 10.1073/pnas.2120015119

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Environmental Science and Technology. 2022 January; 10.1021/acs.est.2c01671

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Chemosphere. 2021 January; 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.128059

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Science of the Total Environment. 2020 January; 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134800

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ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. 2019 January; 10.1021/acsearthspacechem.9b00010

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Science of the Total Environment. 2017 January; 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.04.037

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Environmental Pollution. 2016 January; 10.1016/j.envpol.2016.08.032

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Environmental Science and Technology. 2013 January; 10.1021/es3048027

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