Please join the Calgary Mineral Exploration Group on Friday, April 11 for a talk given by Jennifer Galloway

If you would like to attend the luncheon, please RSVP by email at megcalgary@gmail.com or by selecting one of the options below.

**Please RSVP as soon as possible to accommodate everyone for lunch.

If you’d like to pay the Membership or Luncheon fee online, please click on the appropriate link below to be redirected to the secure Square website. Otherwise cash payment is available at the door.

Luncheon Details:

Date: Friday, April 11, 2025
Location: Kerby Centre – downtown Calgary (1133 – 7th Ave. SW)
Doors open at 11:30 am
Talk starts at 12:00 pm (NOTE TIME FOR THIS LUNCHEON)
Membership: $25
Luncheon for Members: $30
Luncheon Non-members: $35
Talk and Beverage (Coffee, Juice, Pop): $10
University, SAIT, NAIT students: FREE with student ID (with purchase of membership)

NOTE: There is complimentary parking at the Kerby Centre. Parking lots are located beside the building (east) or across the LRT (North). Register your vehicle at Reception.

Presentation Abstract:

Climate change is profoundly affecting seasonality, biological productivity, and hydrology in high northern latitudes. In sensitive subarctic environments exploitation of mineral resources led to contamination and it is not known how cumulative effects of resource extraction and climate warming will impact ecosystems. Gold mines near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, subarctic Canada, operated from 1938 to 2004 and released more than 20,000 tonnes of bioaccessible and toxic arsenic trioxide (As2O3) to the environment through stack emissions. This release resulted in elevated arsenic (As) concentrations in lake surface waters and sediments relative to Canadian drinking water standards and guidelines for the protection of aquatic life. A meta-analytical approach is used to better understand controls on As distribution in lake sediments within a 30-km radius of historic mineral processing activities. Arsenic concentrations in the near-surface sediments range from 5mg·kg−1 to over 10,000 mg·kg−1 (median 81 mg·kg−1; n=105). Distance and direction from the historic roaster stack at the former Giant Mine are significantly (p<0.05) related to sedimentary As concentration, with highest As concentrations in the sediments of lakes within 11 km and located downwind of the former stack. Synchrotron-based μXRF and μXRD confirm the presence of As2O3 in near surface sediments of multiple lakes, persisting decades after roasting emissions ceased. Labile sedimentary organic matter (S1) is significantly (p<0.05) related to As and sulphur concentrations in sediments, and these relationships are greatest in lakes within 11 km from the mine. We interpret the relationship between labile organic matter and As to reflect the role of reactive organic matter as a substrate for microbial growth that in turn mediates authigenic precipitation of As-sulphides in sediment of lakes most severely affected by mining emissions. This has implications for the fate of mining-released As; continued climate warming is expected to promote biological productivity that will in turn drive changes in the organic geochemistry of lake sediments that we show to be an important role in the mobility and fate of As in aquatic ecosystems. This work defined the spatial extent of contamination from historic mining in off-lease areas otherwise not monitored for contamination, determined pre-mining geochemical baseline for As in a mineralized region, and was used in the issuance of a Human Health order by the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Results are published in Galloway, J.M., Swindles, G.T., Jamieson, H.E., Palmer, M., Parsons, M.B., Sanei, H., Macumber, A.L., Patterson, R.T., Falck, H. 2018. Organic matter control on the distribution of arsenic in lake sediments impacted by ~65 years of gold ore processing in subarctic Canada. Science of the Total Environment. 622-623: 1668-1679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.048

Presenter Bio:

Dr. Jennifer Galloway

Jennifer Galloway is a Research Scientist and Chief Paleontologist at the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary, Alberta. Jennifer obtained a B.Sc. (Hons). in Biology from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario (2002) and a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario (2006). She worked at Golder Associates Ltd. as a water and sediment quality specialist in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (2007 to 2009) before joining the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary, Alberta, first as an NSERC Visiting Fellow (2009 to 2011) and then as a Research Scientist (2011-present). Jennifer held the position of Associate Professor at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University (as a Marie Curie Skłodowska Fellow) between 2019 and 2020, and is a former President of the Canadian Association of Palynologists (2023-2024). She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Energy, and the Environment at the University of Calgary, an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University with affiliation to the Global Water Institute, and is a member of the International Union of Geological Sciences, Subcommission of Cretaceous Stratigraphy, Jurassic/Cretaceous Boundary Working Group.

Jennifer’s research expertise is palynology (the study of pollen and spores). Her research is focused on reconstructing vegetation and climate change from the Mesozoic to recent and she routinely integrates palynology with isotope, organic, and inorganic geochemistry to better understand the inter-related roles of fire, climate change, and vegetation as components of the Earth System. One area of her research focuses on how recent climate change affects the mobility and fate of inorganic contaminants, such as arsenic and mercury. Jennifer is a field geologist who works mainly in Arctic Canada. She has conducted field-based research on Banks, Ellef Ringnes, Axel Heiberg, and Ellesmere islands in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, throughout the Northwest Territories and Nunavut mainland, and on Svalbard. Jennifer has authored or co-authored 96 peer-reviewed journal articles, serves as an Editorial Board Member for Cretaceous Research (Elsevier), Critical Insights in Climate Change (Taylor & Francis), and Evolving Earth (Elsevier), and is Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of Canadian Energy Geoscience (formerly Bulletin of Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists (since 2020).