News

The University of Waterloo’s Water Institute and Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change co-hosted the 2021 summer school on “Climate Change and Water Security in Urbanized Watersheds”. The summer school ran over three weeks, from May 31 to June 14 and targeted graduate students and practitioners. The program included talks and discussions by leading water and climate change scholars with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches. On June 7, Philippe gave his presentation entitled “Urbanization as a driver of global environmental change”.

Innovation News Network has published a special report about our work on quantitative understanding of the biogeochemical reactivity of peat and restoration and management practices that enhance the beneficial functions of peatlands, including their capacity to counteract rising atmospheric CO₂. Read the special report by clicking here. 

 

A study by ecohydrology members Arash Rafat, Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen was published in Nature’s Communications Earth & Environment journal! This study explores how carbon emissons of Candaian Peatlands are projected to increase by 103% by 2100. The news has also been published by the UW press and Water Insitute News.

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.

A new paper in Science of the Total Environment co-authored by Ecohydrology Research Group members Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Dr. Colin McCarter presents the understanding of how wildfires can alter the flux and storage of water within a peat plateau, and how these hydrological changes in addition to other fire-induced physical changes affect the flux of water and solute from the plateau to downslope ecosystems. 

Two current Ecohydrology Research Group undergraduate students have been awarded NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarships for their upcoming Masters research. Research Assistant Arash Rafat and Undergraduate Thesis Student Jane Ye are currently in the final year of their undergraduate programs and have been awarded the scholarships for their Masters starting in September 2021.

As part of Global Water Futures Core Modeling and Forecasting Team’s webinar series, Philippe presented an overview of water quality modeling activities within the team.