News

Ecohydrology Research Group members Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen, Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad, and Dr. Adrian Mellage co-authored a new paper that was recently published in Science of the Total Environment. The paper presents the results from flow-through experiments where Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) was successfully implemented to monitor transport of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (CoFe-NPs) coated with Pluronic, anamphiphilic polymer through natural aquifer sand-packed columns.

Ecohydrology group MSc student Heather Townsend successfully defended her thesis on January 21, 2021 in a virtual defence. Heather's thesis is titled "Environmental sensitivities of coupled biogeochemical cycles in anoxic conditions: from soil batch experiments to a bioenergetics approach." 

A new paper co-authored by Ecohydrology Research Group member Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Dr. Thai Phan from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences has been published in Environmental Advances. The study assessed the alternative use of the lepidolite extraction solid blended residue, containing elevated level of thallium (Tl), as fill material in post-mining land reclamation.

The Ecohydrology Research Group is collaborating with scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL, in Richland, Washington) to study the transport and degradation of Particulate Organic Matter (POM) in hyporheic zones.

Ecohydrology Research Group postdoctoral fellow Eunji Byun published a new article in Nature Geoscience titled "Extensive wetland development in mid-latitude North America during the Bølling–Allerød".

During Fall 2020, the School of Environmental Studies at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan organized the Environmental Hydrogeology Frontier Lecture Series as part of the International Forum on Environmental Hydrogeology.

Ecohydrology group MSc student Nady Kao successfully defended his thesis on December 15, 2020 in a virtual defence. Nady's thesis is titled "Influence of a dammed reservoir on nutrient (N, P, Si) loads and ratios of the Thames River, Ontario". His research was funded by a grant from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to study phosphorus dynamics in the Thames River. Nady was supervised by Drs. Philippe Van Cappellen and Chris Parsons (Environment and Climate Change Canada) and the committee included Drs.

From September to November the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute, in collaboration with the United Nations’ Environment Programme 'Global Peatland Initiative' (UNEP GPI), hosted three virtual workshops to bringing together 150 Canadian peatland researchers, government officials, private sector representatives and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Mehdi Gharasoo of the Ecohydrology Research Group co-authored an article, titled “Deep Learning Neural Network Approach for Predicting the Sorption of Ionizable and Polar Organic Pollutants to a Wide Range of Carbonaceous Materials”, in collaboration with the researchers at the Vienna University, Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, which was published in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T). The article has been selected as one of the top cited articles in ES&T by the authors from Europe region from 2018-2020.

By incorporating a synthetic DNA sequence in a polyacrylamide hydrogel, a new nanomaterial able to measure very low concentrations of mercury in water samples was developed. Next, the new material was incorporated in a Diffusive Gradient in Thin Film (DGT) holder to produce a cost-effective, easy-to-operate, field-deployable DGT-DNA sensor for aqueous mercury(II), which requires no sample preparation.