Fire, Earth, Water, Air
Contaminant Biogeochemistry Lab
Understanding the connectivity between enviromental systems
We have set out to develop global strategies to reduce the impact of pollutants on human and environmental health. Our research utilizes a multi-disciplinary approach allowing for greater quantitative and qualitative assessment of this impact.

A team committed to environmental stewardship & understanding the impacts contaminants have on natural systems
Led by Dr. David McLagan, the FEWA lab is a safe and welcoming space for people of all backgrounds. The lab brings together a diverse group of students/researchers, who are passionate about environmental protection and strive to build meaningful research collaborations in Canada and abroad.
Lab News
FEWA Lab PI, David McLagan, wins Governor General’s Innovation Award
David McLagan, along with PhD Supervisors, Carl Mitchell and Frank Wania (from University of Toronto Scarborough) were one of six winners of the Governor General's Innovation Award for the development and commercialization of MerPAS. The award was presented at a...
David McLagan featured on Emerging Environments podcast
David was interviewed by Prof. Karen Smith and Prof. Stu Livingston from the Dept. of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto on their really cool podcast called Emerging Environments. They chatted about David's path in research, mercury as a...
Research Projects
Wildfire Modelling
The FEWA Lab interest in wildfires continues to grow. 2023 will see primarily student led wildfire modelling projects that will examine wildfire smoke emissions and wildfire danger indices to help improve our understanding of fire using numerical tools. One of the...
Wildfire emissions and in-plume chemistry monitoring using alternative sampling methodologies
In 2018, Dr. McLagan worked on the Oil Sands Monitoring Campaign with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) that utilised a research aircraft decked out with an array of sophisticated atmospheric contaminant monitoring instruments. During this campaign, there...
Assessing internal tree physiological processing and archiving of mercury using stable mercury isotopes.
Our knowledge of the critical ecosystem services trees and forests play as a sink for anthropogenically perturbed contaminants such as mercury has developed rapidly over the past two decades. For mercury we have learned that the foliar assimilation of elemental...