News

The Ecohydrology Research Group is thrilled to announce the successful funding of $630,769 for a new Collaborative Research and Development project on “Elucidating the biogeochemical processes controlling natural source zone depletion (NSZD) of petroleum hydrocarbons in contaminated soils under dynamic redox conditions”.

The first Technion-Waterloo Research Symposium was held on the campus of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, 21-22 November, 2018. Ecohydrology researchers Philippe Van Cappellen and Adrian Mellage attended the symposium. Philippe presented a talk entitled “Exploring the Subsurface – Or how spectral induced polarization (SIP) can be used to monitor below-ground colloid fate and transport”.

Group members Christina Smeaton, Bingjie Shi, and Kunfu Pi recently attended the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference which was held August 12-17 in Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to attending talks, networking, and presenting their research, they were also able to catch up with ERG alumni Taylor Maavara (PDF at Berkeley Lab), Ekaterina Markelova (consultant at Amphos 21, Barcelona, Spain), and Gianna Marschmann (PhD student at University of Hohenheim and future PDF at Berkeley Lab). 

On June 17-20, the 1^stInternational Conference on Water Security took place in Toronto. The conference brought together water experts from around the world to discuss new platforms and tools to move scientific knowledge and data into solutions that mitigate the impacts of human activities on the availability and quality of freshwater resources.

From June 10th to 14th, the 2018 Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU), Canadian Soil Science Society (CSSS), and Computational Infrastructure in Geodynamics (CIG) Joint Annual Meeting was held in Niagara Falls. The multidisciplinary conference featured presentations, lectures, and posters on topics from hydrology to geodynamics. More information about the conference can be found on the conference website.

Ecohydrology group members were involved in the following sessions presented at the conference:

A delegation of the Water Institute (WI) comprising Roy Brouwer, Neil Thomson and Philippe Van Cappellen visited São Paulo State on May 7-10, hosted by the Secretariat of the Environment of the São Paulo State government. The Secretariat integrates several agencies and institutes within the Environmental System of São Paulo (SAP), including the São Paulo State Environmental Agency (CETESB), the Forestry Foundation and the Geological Institute. The visit was facilitated by the Canadian Consulate in São Paulo, in particular thanks to the efforts of Mr. Patrick Courcelles.

Last Thursday, the recipients of the Winter 2018 Water Institute Seed Grants were announced. The winners of the grants include two projects led by Ecohydrology group members:

• Homa Kheyrollah Pour, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Philippe Van Cappellen, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Roland Hall, Biology; Andrea Scott, Systems Design Engineering; Georgiy Kitillin, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries

  Seasonal patterns of chlorophyll and temperature in lakes: Detection and attribution of climate change signal

A paper published this week in Nature Communications by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute presents new findings on the distribution of microplastics in Arctic sea ice. The paper is featured in an article in the magazine Popular Science and includes comments by Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen.

The full article, titled "Good job: Arctic sea ice is full of our junk plastic", is available on Popular Science's website.

Last week, Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad visited Beijing, China to meet with members of the Soil and Solid Waste Institute from the China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES), to discuss future collaborations between CRAES and the Water Institute.

Read the article posted by the Water Institute for more information about the visit.

This year's European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly was held in Vienna from April 9th to 13th. At the conference, Dr. Hans Durr presented a poster titled 'Regional-scale nutrient levels in groundwaters around the Laurentian Great Lakes'.