Dr. Chris Burn wins University Research Achievement Award for 2010

Chris Burn was recently announced as winner of a University Research Achievement Award for 2010. Chris is the first member of the Department to receive two of these prestigious awards, his prior success being in 1999. Previously, John Clarke, Simon Dalby, and Fiona Mackenzie have been recognized in this way.

Chris’s award will facilitate his research at Herschel Island in the western Arctic, the largest of Yukon’s islands in the Beaufort Sea.  In particular he will investigate when Herschel became an island, as sea-level rise swamped the ground joining it to the mainland. This project will involve obtaining the temperature of subsea permafrost in Workboat Passage, between the island and the mainland, and deterinmining how long it has taken for the sediments to warm up to their present condition.

Chris is currently editing a multi-disciplinary book about Herschel Island, with 35 chapters covering Land and Water, Flora and Fauna, and People and Culture for this place, to which the first resource rush in the western Arctic occurred, from 1889-1907, for the hunting of bowhead whales.  The book may be available before Christmas 2010.