News

The annual meeting for a research project funded by NSERC’s Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada program and led by the University of Waterloo’s Ecohydrology Research Group was held virtually on September 16, 2020. The project, titled “Winter Carbon Losses in Wetland Ecosystems under Current and Future Climates,” includes researchers and collaborators from Laurentian University, Wilfrid Laurier University, Grenfell Campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Natural Resources Canada.

The annual meeting for a Collaborative Research and Development project led by the Ecohydrology Research Group was held on September 10, 2020. The project, titled “Elucidating the biogeochemical processes controlling natural source zone depletion (NSZD) of petroleum hydrocarbons in contaminated soils under dynamic redox conditions,” is funded by an award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and in partnership with Imperial Oil Limited for 3 years (2019-2022).

In a new book chapter published by Nova Science Publishers, ERG researchers Tariq Aziz and Philippe Van Cappellen describe the uncertainties associated with estimating monetary values of ecosystem services.

The recently published paper Changes in Sedimentary Phosphorus Burial Following Artificial Eutrophication of Lake 227, Experimental Lakes Area, Ontario, Canadapublished in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences was selected as a Research Spotlight from the 22 peer-reviewed journals published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The damming of rivers is one of the most impactful modifications of the flows of water and associated materials from land to sea. Included in these materials are nutrient elements like nitrogen and phosphorus, which are elements required by all life on Earth, and silicon, which is required by diatoms, the algae that account for the largest fraction of biological productivity of the oceans. Past studies have shown that changes in the ratios in which these nutrient elements enter the coastal oceans affect plankton communities, even causing harmful algal blooms or “red tides” to occur. In a new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, (former) ERG researchers Taylor Maavara, Zahra Akbarzadeh and Philippe Van Cappellen use models of nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicon cycling in dam reservoirs to determine how the damming of rivers change the nutrient ratios delivered to coastal zones worldwide.

Over the past 50 years, phosphorus (P) has been added each year to Lake 227, making it the world’s longest experiment in P fertilization. Located in Canada’s Experimental Lakes Area, Lake 227 conclusively demonstrated that excess phosphate in lakes causes algal blooms, in turn leading to worldwide bans on phosphates in detergents, improvements in wastewater P removal, and reductions in fertilizer applications. A key question, however, is: Where did the P added to Lake 227 end up? This is where David O’Connell and Philippe Van Cappellen of the Ecohydrology Research Group, together with colleagues from Canada, Netherlands, and USA, turned to examining phosphorus in the sediments accumulating at the bottom of the lake.  

Yuki Audette, Chris Parsons, Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Phillippe Van Cappellen of the Ecohydrology Research Group co-authored a paper titled “Phosphorus binding to soil organic matter via ternary complexes with calcium”, which was recently published in Chemosphere.

The prevalence of Urinary Stone Disease (USD) or urolithiasis has been increasing over the past few decades. In this new paper published in Science of the Total Environment an international team from China University of Geosciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Ecohydrology Research Group present evidence that the spatial distribution of USD can be explained to a large degree by geo-environmental conditions, including lithology, water chemistry and climate.

A new paper in Earth-Science Reviews, co-authored by Ecohydrology Research Group members Colin McCarter, Fereidoun Rezanezhad, and Philippe Van Cappellen reviews the role of pore structure on the hydrological and (bio)geochemical processes governing peat and peatlands.

A new editorial co-authored by Ecohydrology researcher Fereidoun Rezanezhad, along with collaborators Colin McCarter and Bernd Lennartz, was recently published in Frontiers in Environmental Science. The editorial is a summary of the Research Topic “Wetland Biogeochemistry: Response to Environmental Change.”