Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Cross-Appointments
Fields of Study
- Environment & Climate
- Physical Geography
Areas of Interest
Paleoecology, paleoclimatology, Quaternary science, climate change, biogeography, wetlands, peatlands, aquatic ecosystems, carbon cycling, boreal biome, Arctic.
Biography
I am a paleoecologist and paleoclimatologist with research interests in Holocene and Late Pleistocene wetland development, carbon cycling in wetlands, palynology and other microfossil proxies for long-term environmental changes, and the application of paleoecological knowledge to climate change mitigation and adaptation. My study sites are located in Ontario's Far North in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, as well as in Southern Ontario in lakes and wetlands in the watersheds of the Great Lakes.
Publications
Finkelstein SA, Bunbury J*, Gajewski K, Wolfe AP, Adams JK*, Devlin J*. 2014. Evaluating diatom-inferred Holocene pH reconstructions for arctic lakes derived from an expanded 171-lake training set. Journal of Quaternary Science 29(3): 249-260
Packalen MS*, Finkelstein SA, McLaughlin, J. 2016. Climate and peat type in relation to the spatial distribution of the peat carbon mass in the Hudson Bay Lowland, Canada. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, doi:10.1002/2015JG002938
Byun E*, Finkelstein SA, Cowling SA, Badiou P. 2018. Potential carbon loss associated with post‑settlement wetland conversion in southern Ontario, Canada. Carbon Balance and Management 13:6; DOI: 10.1186/s13021-018-0094-4
Dalton AS*, Finkelstein SA, Forman SL, Barnett PJ, Pico T, Mitrovica JX. 2019. Was the Laurentide Ice Sheet significantly reduced during Marine Isotope Stage 3? Geology doi.org/10.1130/G45335.1
Loder AL*, Finkelstein SA. 2020. Carbon accumulation in freshwater marsh soils: A synthesis for temperate North America. Wetlands 40(5): 1173-1187. doi.org/10.1007/s13157-019-01264-6
* are grad student co-authors