2 minute read
Andrew Burton ’07
GOING WITH THE FLOW:
A LIFETIME INTEREST IN OUR WATER SOURCES
ALUMNI PROFILE: Andrew Burton ’07 (M.Sc., Watershed Ecosystems)
“The day I handed in my undergraduate thesis, I moved to Peterborough, and then a few days later I found myself in Europe. I’d never ever been outside of North America, I’d hardly even been on a plane before, and there I was in a foreign country.
You can imagine the logistical nightmare, planning and organizing and sampling in a country you’ve never been in before—and then hiking some of the highest elevation mountains in the country. These hikes ranged from an hour to four hours, just to get up to the lake location. We’d spend about half an hour to an hour collecting water samples and doing testing, and then it was back down to the bottom, to the car, and then off to another mountain and back up again. Over roughly 36 days, we sampled something like 87 lakes across the country.
Initially the plan was to stay in a tent, so we were camping and cooking our own meals. But even though it was May and June, it was pretty cold and constantly raining. Every day we were soaked. We’d go back to the tent soaked. We’d get up in the morning and have to put dry socks into soaking-wet boots. Eventually we just found that we could never get our clothes dry, and that we were drenched all the time. Because Ireland’s weather is so unpredictable, you can have all four seasons within a single day. High winds, especially at the top of those mountains. Pounding rain. Fog so thick that we couldn’t see much more than a couple meters in front of our faces. And there are cliffs! It was wild, to be honest—it was totally wild, and I absolutely loved it.”
Andrew Burton is a senior water quality specialist with over nine years of professional experience in environmental consulting, scientific research and government, specializing in the fields of atmospheric, terrestrial and aquatic chemistry. His areas of expertise include water quality, watershed management, eutrophication, fate of trace metals, atmospheric pollution, ecosystem acidification, environmental impact assessment, soil genesis and classification, and soil biogeochemistry. Upon completing his M.Sc., Andrew was awarded a one-year internship with Environment Canada. Under the supervision of Dr. Julian Aherne, Andrew investigated the impacts of pollutants on semi-natural systems in Canada and the Republic of Ireland. Since 2016, Andrew has worked as a senior water quality specialist for the Government of Manitoba, providing technical expertise to deliver province-wide environmental programs related to the development of water quality standards, objectives and guidelines. In addition, Andrew is Manitoba’s representative on the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Guidelines Project Team.
