News

Environmental indicators are powerful tools for tracking environmental changes, measuring environmental performance, and informing policymakers. Many diverse environmental indicators are in use or in development. The paper, co-authored by Philippe Van Cappellen, reviews recent advances in agricultural environmental indicators, and identifies areas in which they need to be improved, in particular in order to provide consistent performance and allow for comparisons, both nationally and internationally.

Tamara Van Staden, a current Master's student working with the Ecohydrology Research Group, has been awarded an NSERC Scholarship, starting in the fall. The NSERC award is one of the Tri-Agency scholarships awarded to master's students based on academic achievement, research potential, and extra-curricular activity. Congratulations, Tamara!

SciTech Europa recently published a Partner Profile for the Ecohydrology Research Group.

Check out the article, titled "Elucidating water quality controls across scales", on SciTech Europa's website.

In Changchun, Philippe Van Cappellen and Shuhuan Li attended the ceremony marking the release of the book Groundwater Science, which summarizes hydrogeological research in China. The book was edited by Professor Xueyu Lin (5^th from the left) and Professor Yanxin Wang (6^th from the left). Following the ceremony, Philippe participated in the first workshop on the Development Strategy of the Discipline of Hydrogeology in China, sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Today, Philippe was conferred as one of the Honorary Professors of the Tianjin University. This conferring ceremony was held at the beginning of the International Workshop on Surface-Earth System Science this morning in Tianjin (China).

Philippe will be giving a speech on Wednesday, titled "Damming profoundly changes riverine nutrient delivery to the global coastal zone".

Philippe Van Cappellen and Shuhuan Li participated in the first International Workshop on Earth-Surface System Science organized by the Institute for Earth-Surface System Science (IESS) in Tianjin on March 27-28, 2018. During the opening ceremony, Philippe and 6 other prominent scientists were made Honorary Professors of Tianjin University. During the workshop, Philippe delivered a seminar on changes in riverine nutrient fluxes due to damming.

A paper by Kim Van Meter, Philippe Van Cappellen and Nandita Basu published in the journal Science shows that even under the most favourable management scenarios reducing the hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico may take many decades, because of the accumulation of large amounts of nitrogen in rural soils due to years of intensive agriculture in the Mississippi River basin.The slow release of this legacy nitrogen creates long lag times between the implementation of conservation practices and measurable improvements in water quality.

A new publication, co-authored by Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad, has been published in Water! The article, titled "Nitrate Attenuation in Degraded Peat Soil-Based Constructed Wetlands", was written in collaboration with Christian Kleimeier, Dr. Haojie Liu, and Dr. Bernd Lennartz from the University of Rostock.

You can read the full open-access publication on Water's webpage.

On March 22nd, the Ecohydrology Research Group took part in the World Water Day 2018 celebrations. The event, organized collaboratively by the Univeristy of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, was held in the Science Teaching Complex at UWaterloo this year. The event comprised of a keynote speech by TVO's The Water Boys, a panel discussion, a poster session, and a water-themed photo competition.

The following members of the ERG presented their research at the poster session:

The 2018 Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference (ARC'18) was held on March 19th and 20th, 2018, at the Qatar National Convention Centre. Dr. Stephane Ngueleu presented a poster, titled: "Groundwater Pollution by Psetroleum-Derived Contaminants in Coastal (Semi)-Arid Environment” with co-authors Dr. Riyadh Ibrahim Al-Raoush (Qatar University) and Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen from the Ecohydrology Research Group.

Additional information about ARC'18 can be found at their website.