Carl is a hydrologist and biogeochemist in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He leads the Watershed And Terrestrial Ecosystems Research (WATER) group, whose work focuses on the interface of hydrological and biogeochemical processes, especially as they relate to contaminant transport and transformations, as well as practices for managing watershed activities that affect these interactions. His group particularly specializes in research related to mercury cycling in the environment.
At Cape Bounty, we are particularly interested in understanding how permafrost degradation, such as slumping, affects methylmercury formation and surface-air fluxes of gaseous elemental mercury. Methylmercury formation is an important process because methylmercury is the primary form of mercury that bioaccumulates in organisms and biomagnifies through aquatic food chains. Most of the mercury entering the arctic is through the atmosphere and most of it accumulates in the tundra surface and subsurface. So, understanding air fluxes allows us to better characterize the inputs and storage of mercury that is available for transport into aquatic systems. During summer 2025, we deployed a mercury flux tower system to analyze the movement of gaseous elemental mercury between air and tundra. We also collected several cores of surface material through the active layer and into shallow permafrost for use in laboratory experiments to measure the production and degradation of methylmercury.
Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory 