News

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. By Jovana Radosavljevic, Jiangyue Ju and Water Institute members David L Rudolph, Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Nancy Goucher and Philippe Van Cappellen.

...For decades, applying road salt has been regarded as a simple but vital tool in countering the dangers of slippery road conditions, but the downsides of its use are apparent with implications that extend beyond the cold months...

A new research article titled “Current State of Microplastic Pollution Research Data: Trends in Availability and Sources of Open Data” authored by ERG undergraduate co-op student Tia Jenkins has been published. The article published in Frontiers in Environmental Science investigated the findability and accessibility of research data within the microplastics community.

This year’s theme of the 9^th International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research (ICWRER) is Bridging the Gaps of Interdisciplinary Sustainability for Complex Water and Environmental Systems. The Conference was held virtually on April25 to 27. Philippe gave an invited talk in the session on Eco-water Security and Smart Water Management in Large River Basins, chaired by Profs. Jun Xia and Gangsheng Wang. The topic of the talk was Biogeochemical Impacts of River Damming: Lessons Learned and Implications for Watershed Management.

The oxidation of Fe(II) plays an important role in the biogeochemical cycling of redox-sensitive elements and the fate and transport of pollutants in subsurface environments. In a joint study by researchers from ERG and China University of Geosciences, the kinetics of aqueous Fe(II) oxidation by O₂ were measured at variable pH in the presence of riboflavin and desferrioxamine B as representative flavins and siderophores, respectively. The study closes important gaps in our understanding of the reaction mechanisms involved.

Ecohydrology's Philippe Van Cappellen and team have received a $1 Million dollar grant from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) joint funding initiative on Plastics science for a cleaner future for their project: Microplastics Fingerprinting at the Watershed Scale: From Sources to Receivers.

Ecohydrology researchers presented virtually at this year's European Geosciences Union (EGU), which was held from April 19^th to 30^th. The following works have been presented:

A. Rafat, F. Rezanezhad, W. L. Quinton, E. R. Humphreys4, K. Webster, P. Van Cappellen.  Predicting Non-growing Season Net Ecosystem Exchanges of CO₂ from a Canadian Peatlands. Geophysical Research Abstracts, European Geosciences Union General Assembly, EGU21-3348, Gather Online, 19-30 April, 2021.

Members of ecohydrology research group attended the 2021 GWF virtual confernce on May 17-19 2021! 

Day 1 Poster Session:

Bowen Zhou: Climatic controls on phosphorus fluxes from a bioretention facility in a heavily urbanized catchment using a process-based eco-hydrological model –Poster ID: 13

Innovation News Network has published a special report about our work on using spectral induced polarization, a geophysical method, to monitor microbial activity and nanoparticles in real-time in earth's subsurface. Read the special report by clicking here. The report summarizes the research led by Dr.

Philippe Van Cappellen (Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Ecohydrology) participated as a panellist on Thursday, November 8th, in a session on "Water at the science-policy interface: Challenges and opportunities for Canada" at the 10^th annual Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC). The panel was put together by Global Water Futures and Ecohydrology Research group members, Homa Kheyrollah Pour (also conference co-chair and panel moderator), Tatjana Milojevic and Nancy Goucher (panel co-organizers).