Marlene Evans Research Scientist and Adjunct Professor

Environment and Climate Change Canada and Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan

Academic Background

  • B.Sc. Hons, Carleton University
  • Ph. D., Biological Oceanography, University of British Columbia

Research Expertise and Interests

Marlene Evans main projects focus on contaminants in the environment, particularly fish and sediments. This includes mercury food web studies at a variety of lakes in the western provinces; mercury and persistent organic trends in Great Slave Lake; and mercury focused studies of sea-run char at Cambridge Bay, and mercury studies related to oil sands activities and western mercury emitters. She is also investigating PAHs under various oil sands studies. She is investigating the sensitivity of lakes to acidification from the oil sands with nitrogen emerging as an issue of concern. Evans has interests in basic limnology, ecology and productivity and has been able to develop collaborations based on my current projects which bring value-added components to my collaborator's studies. Overall she is most interested in studies related to protecting northern ecosystems, particularly lakes, from adverse impacts from development and investigating how climate change will affect these systems. Marlene Evans recently have become involved with the Nature Conservancy, including volunteer activities with sites in the southern portion of the province and has become a member of the Saskatchewan Regional Board and is currently looking for opportunities to contribute to NC goals in grassland and other southern areas.

Research Keywords

  • Mercury
  • Lake acidification
  • Organic contaminants
  • Fish
  • Nitrogen

Publications

Riget, F, Bignert, A., Braune, B. Dam, D., Dietz, R. Evans, M. Green, N., Gunnlaugsdottir, H., Kucklick, J., Letcher, R., Muir, D.,

Sonne, C., Stern, G., Tomy, G., Vander Pot, S. Vorkamp, K., Wilson. S. Accepted for publication.  A status of temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Arctic biota. Sci. Total. Envir.

Wiklund, J. A., Kirk, J. L. Muir, D. C. G., Carrier, J., Gleason, A., Yang, F., Evans, M., J. Keating. 2018. Widespread atmospheric Tellurium contamination in industrial and remote regions of Canada. Sci. Tot. Environ. 52:6137-6145

Cott, P., Amos, A., Guzzo, M., Chavarie, L, Goater, C., Muir, D., Evans, M. 2018. Can traditional methods of selecting food accurately assess fish health? Arctic Science. 4:205-222.

Cooke, C. A. Kirk, J. L, Muir, D. C. G., Wiklund, J. A., Wang, X., Gleason, A., Evans, M. S. 2017. Spatial and temporal patterns in trace element deposition to Lakes in the Athabasca oil sands region (Alberta, Canada). Environmental Research Letters. 12: 124001. https://doLorg/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9505

Wiklund, J. A., J. L Kirk, D. C. G. Muir, M. Evans, F. Yang., J. Keating, M. T. Parsons. 2017. Anthropogenic mercury deposition in Flin Flon Manitoba and the Experimental Lakes Area Ontario (Canada): A multi-lake sediment core reconstruction. Sci. Total. Environ. 586: 685-695.

Anas, M.U.M., B. J., Meegahage, M. S., Evans, D. S., Jeffries, and B. Wissel. 2017. Scale-dependent effects of natural environmental gradients, industrial emissions and dispersal processes on zooplankton metacommunity structure: Implications for the bioassessment of boreal lakes. Ecological Indicators 82:484-494.

Cott, PA., E. J. Szkokan-Emilson, P. L Savage, B. W. Hanna, C. R. Bronte, and M. S. Evans. 2016. Large lakes of northern Canada: Emerging research in a globally-important fresh water resource. J. Great Lakes Research 42:163-165

Evans, M. S., and D. C. G. Muir. 2016. Persistent organic contaminants in sediments and biota of Great Slave Lake, Canada: Slave River and long-range atmospheric source influences. J. Great Lakes Research 42:233-247.

Summers, J. C., J. Kurek, J. L. Kirk, D. C.G. Muir, X. Wang, J. A. Wiklund, C. A. Cooke, M. S. Evans, J. P. Smol. 2016. Recent warming, rather than industrial emissions of bioavailable nutrients, is the dominant driver of lake primary production shifts across the Athabasca Oil Sands Region. PLOS ONE//(5)e0153987

Evans, M. S., M. Davies, K. Janzen, D. Muir, R. Hazewinkel, J. IGrk, and D. de Boer. 2016. PAH distributions in sediments in the oil sands monitoring area and western Lake Athabasca; concentration, composition and diagnostic ratios. Environmental Pollution 213:671-687