News

Philippe attended the Mid-Term Evaluation meeting of the R&D projects funded under the ERA-NET Cofund WaterWorks2015 Joint Call to support research on the sustainable management of water resources in agriculture, forestry and freshwater aquaculture sectors. The meeting was held in Madrid, Spain on March 27-28. In total 21 projects were evaluated.

Md Abdus Sabur, has successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled "Interaction of Phosphate and Silicate with Iron Oxides in Freshwater Environments". Sabur completed his PhD with the Ecohydrology Research Group, at the University of Waterloo. The members of his examination committee included: Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen (supervisor), Dr. Chris Parsons, Dr. Carol Ptacek, Dr. Grant Ferris, Dr. Thai Phan, and Dr. Roland Hall.

Ecohydrology Group member, Dr. Fereidoun Rezanzhad, is the co-author of a new publication in collaboration with researchers from the University of Waterloo's Geography and Environmental Management department. The paper, titled "Nutrient Leaching in Soil Affected by Fertilizer Application and Frozen Ground", explains the influences of preferential flow on nutrient transport and offers recommendations for the strategic implementation of subsurface placement of fertilizer.

On February 26^th, Ecohydrology researchers hosted a successful kick-off meeting for the Cold Regions Ecohydrogeology (COREH) project, supported through the University of Waterloo's International Research Partnership Grants.

Ecohydrology researchers hosted a workshop for University of Waterloo researchers and researchers from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, Germany, on Thursday February 21^st.

The geochemistry community is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Wallace S. Broecker on 18 February 2019 at the age of 87. 

Known affectionately as the "Grandfather of Climate Science", Wally was an amazing force for scientific innovation.

Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad received the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Visiting Professor award. As part of this award, Fereidoun will visit the TUM in Spring 2019 to collaborate with Professors Kögel-Knabner and Carsten Muller on cold regions hydrogeochemistry research, to better understand the role of winter soil processes on the export of carbon and nutrients under non-growing season in cold region soil ecosystems. Congratulations, Fereidoun!

Philippe visited the Laboratoire the Physique Subatomique et des Technologies Associées (SUBATECH) in Nantes on January 28-29. He met with members of the Radiochemistry group, including Dr. Catherine Landesman and Dr. Abdesselam Abdelouas, to discuss joint research projects using environmental radioisotopes. He presented a talk entitled “What’s in a Name: Ecohydrology – Waterloo Style”.

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from inland waters remain a major source of uncertainty in global greenhouse gas budgets. In the paper published in the journal Global Change Biology a novel mechanistic modeling approach is presented to explicitly predict the N₂O production and emissions via nitrification and denitrification in rivers, reservoirs, and estuaries. The global inland water N₂O emissions estimated with this approach are 10-20 Gmol per year, with reservoirs releasing the most N₂O per unit surface area.