News

The Goldschmidt conference was again virtual in 2021. It was held on July 4-9. Check out ERG’s presentations at this year’s Goldschmidt conference:

Zahra Akbarzadeh, Serghei Bocaniov, Helen Powley, Igor Markelov and Philippe Van Cappellen: The role of shallow basins and the littoral zone in modulating lake P cycling: a mass balance analysis of Lake Erie.

Advance publication of review paper on Cold Region Critical Zone research

The review paper entitled “The Cold Region Critical Zone in Transition: Responses to Climate Warming and Land Use Change” in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources is now available online. The paper is co-authored by ERG researchers Kunfu Pi (now at China University of Geosciences, Wuhan), Christina Smeaton (now at Memorial University), Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen, together with colleagues from China, Sweden, France and Russia.

The paper entitled “Consecutive Fe redox cycles decrease bioreducible Fe(III) and Fe isotope fractionations by eliminating small clay particles” was published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta by ERG researchers Bingjie Shi, Christina Smeaton, Chris Parsons and Philippe Van Cappellen in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The paper presents the very first experimental data on the changes in iron (Fe) isotope fractionation of a Fe-rich clay mineral during successive redox cycles.

ERG's undergraduate student, Arash Rafat's research on climate change and peatlands recently published in Nature Journal, has also had a blog post written about it in the Nature Ecology & Evolution Community. Check it out here: https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/climate-change-and-peatlands-increased-non-growing-season-emissions

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