News

Linden Fairbairn, a Master's student working with the Ecohydrology Research Group, was recently awarded the Canadian Water Resources Association Scholarship Award for 2018. The scholarship is awarded annually to five graduate students across Canada whose research centers around water research. Congratulations, Linden!

For more information about the scholarship, please visit the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) website.

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.

A new publication, co-authored by Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad, has been published in Journal of Hydrology. The article, titled "Evaluating the hydraulic and transport properties of peat soil using pore network modeling and X-Ray micro computed tomography", was written in collaboration with Behrad Gharedaghloo, Dr. Jonathan S. Price and Dr. William L. Quinton.

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'.

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.