Smol works on a diverse range of subjects, most of which focus on using lake sediments to reconstruct past environmental trends. Topics include:
lake acidification caused by
acid rain, sewage input and fertilizer runoff (
eutrophication), studies of nutrient and contaminant transport by birds and other biovectors, and a large program on climatic change. For about three decades, he has been leading research in the high
Arctic, studying the present-day ecology of polar lakes and ponds, and then using paleolimnological approaches to determine how these ecosystems have been changing due to natural and
anthropogenic stressors. The author or editor of 25 books and over 770 journal publications and book chapters, Smol is an international lecturer and media commentator on a variety of topics, but most dealing with environmental issues. From 1987 to 2007, he edited the
Journal of Paleolimnology. Since 2004, he has been editor of the journal
Environmental Reviews. He is the series editor of the
Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research book series. He held the Chair of the International Paleolimnology Association for two three-year terms ending in August 2018, and served as President (2019–2022) of the Academy of Science,
Royal Society of Canada.
Honours and awards Among over 100 awards and fellowships, given by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (
NSERC) to honour Canada's top scientist or engineer. He also holds the distinction of being awarded four individual medals from the
Royal Society of Canada, namely: the
Miroslaw Romanowski Medal for significant contributions to the resolution of environmental problems; the
Flavelle Medal for outstanding contribution to biological science; the McNeil Medal for the Public Awareness of Science; and the
Sir John William Dawson Medal for important and sustained contributions in two domains (in his case, geology and biology) of interdisciplinary research. Smol was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1996,
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018, and named an International member of the US
National Academy of Sciences in 2025. He holds seven honorary degrees: LLD,
St Francis Xavier University (2003); PhD,
University of Helsinki (2007); DSc,
University of Waterloo (2012); LLD,
Mount Allison University (2016); DSc,
Ryerson University (2016); DSc, Western University (
University of Western Ontario) (2017); DSc,
Acadia University (2024). The
Vega Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) was presented to Smol by the King of Sweden in 2023, and the Norwegian Prime Minister presented him with The Mohn Prize, the world’s largest award for Arctic research, in 2026. In 2013 he was named an Officer of the
Order of Canada. and was made a Member of the
Order of Ontario for the class of 2022.
Selected publications • • • • • • • • ==References==