News

The first international joint conference between the International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) and the European Large Lakes Symposium (ELLS-IAGLR 2018), entitled "Big Lakes, Small World", is being held in Evian, France from September 23 to 28, 2018. The conference featured five days of plenaries, workshops, posters, and keynote presentations focused on Large Lakes’ research.

Bingjie Shi has successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled "Tracing Redox cycles during Microbe Clay Interactions Using Stables Iron Isotopes". Bingjie completed her PhD with the Ecohydrology Research Group, at the University of Waterloo. The members of her examination committee were Dr. Eric Roden, Dr. Laura Hug, Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen, Dr. Paul Schroeder, and Dr. David Blowes.

The Ecohydrology Research Group (ERG) and the China University of Geosciences (CUG) in Wuhan are developing long-term collaborations on the geochemistry of black earth soils in northeast China and water quality issues in the central Yangtze River basin. Discussions on August 24 also included the possible establishment of a joint CUG-University of Waterloo technology centre in Wuhan. On August 25, Philippe and Shuhuan joined a group of CUG researchers in Yueyang City to plan future joint field work on Dongting Lake.

The 34^th International Society of Limnology Congress (SIL) took place on August 19-24 in Nanjing China. The SIL congress is the major international meeting covering all aspects of inland waters. The theme for SIL 2018 was "Limnology, a Science for the Preservation and Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems". Much of the program dealt with the pressures on, and management and restoration of, freshwater lakes and reservoirs. Philippe gave one of the 10 plenary lectures at the congress.

The Ecohydrology Research Group and Dajiang Environment Corporation are collaborating on strengthening the water quality management of the Eco-Hi-Tech Island in Nanjing, China (see Wednesday June 13 news item). Philippe and Shuhuan visited the joint Dajiang-Waterloo Research Centre in Nanjing on August 21-23 to discuss progress and plan upcoming activities, including the 3^rd International Summit on Water Environmental Management to be held in Nanjing in October.

This morning, Dr. Anniet Laverman, from the Université de Rennes, presented a talk titled "Assessment of isotopic fractionation associated to nitrate reduction by benthic microbial communities" as part of the Ecohydrology Seminar Series. Thank you to Dr. Laverman for the excellent talk!

The Baltic TRANSCOAST Research Training Group in Rostock, Germany, is seeking applications for thirteen PhD positions in biology, ecology, geochemistry, biogeochemistry, hydro(geo)logy, and engineering. The program will start on January 1st, 2019.

For more information, see the announcement post on the University of Rostock website, and the list of PhD topics.

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.