Dr. Noel James, PhD (McGill) Office: Miller 232 Phone: (613) 533-6170, Fax (613) 533-6592, Email: james@geol.queensu.ca	Department of Geological Sciences & Geological Engineering, Miller Hall, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6

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Research Interests

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible"
Albert Einstein

Noel James has been at Queen's University for ten years, where he teaches about carbonate rocks, petroleum and the geology of North America. Much of this teaching is field based, using localities in the eastern part of the continent and in the Caribbean. He devotes much of his research to understanding the origin of carbonate rocks, principally by investigating modern environments of deposition and applying the concepts learned to the older rock record. This research is a combination of field study, sedimentology, marine geology, stratigraphy, petrography, paleontology and geochemistry.

In the past he has worked principally on the paleoecology, sediment dynamics and early diagenesis of warm-water platform carbonates, especially reefs, throughout the geological record. He helped pioneer the use of research submersibles to study reefs and platform margins, established the importance of seafloor cementation, detailed the critical attributes of paleokarst, worked out early Paleozoic platform evolution in the northern Appalachians and documented many of the oldest metazoan reefs. He has authoured and co-edited five books on various aspects of carbonate sediments and the modelling of sedimentary deposits.

His principal study areas in the modern realm are now in the Southern Ocean, where he and students are examining cool-water carbonates offshore Australia. Similar temperate carbonates are the subject of study in Cenozoic basins onshore Australia and New Zealand and in North American Paleozoic orogenic belts. In conjunction with colleagues in the department, he also has a major research interest in unravelling the principles of Proterozoic carbonate deposition and early diagenesis. These studies are ongoing in the high Arctic, the Cordillera and northern Australia.

He has always had his own research projects with colleagues worldwide, but also carries out research in the same areas with graduate students at the MSc. and PhD. level and with Post-Doctoral Fellows.

For more detailed information, visit Dr James' Home Page

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Last Revision: 6 Feb 2004