News

NSERC announced the recipients of the 2016 strategic partnership grants (SPG) for Projects Competition. Five SPG projects, among a total of 90+ awards nationwide, are led by Waterloo researchers, including the project entitled “Reactive interfaces in agroecosystems: quantifying coupled biogeochemical dynamics across scales using a comprehensive lab-field-modeling approach”.

The University of Waterloo President's office had put up a display during the month of January in recognition of the water-related research conducted at UW. The display included a photo of the Waterloo Pump, a copy of Groundwater by Alan Freeze and John Cherry, and a plastics pollution feature supplied by the Ecohydrology Research Group to highlight the importance of research in the area.

Philippe joined the 2^nd Mini Conference From Land to Sea: Processes and Budgets of the Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) C-Cascades. The Conference was held at ETH Zürich, January 24-26. Philippe presented a talk entitled Pools and Cascades: Dams and Ponds. He also participated in the ITN’s Mid-term Review (January 27-28) as a member of the External Advisory Committee.

Check out this new publication in the Journal of Hazardous Materials by researchers from Wageningen University, together with Philippe Van Cappellen. The paper describes a new method for the removal of selenium from water. Even at low levels selenium is a toxic element. It has, however, many technological applications. Thus, the extraction of selenium from wastewater streams not only prevents its release to the environment, but also helps recover a valuable resource.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area is hosting Philippe Van Cappellen in their Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series. The Series features eminent individuals from various disciplines in the scientific community whose research is outstanding, interdisciplinary, and of broad interest to strategic initiatives in the earth sciences. Philippe will discuss “Rivers in the Anthropocene: Global Scale Modifications of Nutrient Cycles by River Damming.”

A new paper by Kim Van Meter, Nandita Basu and Philippe Van Cappellen provides a historical reconstruction of nitrate yields of two major U.S. watersheds, the Mississippi River and Susquehanna River basins. The paper was published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles and was selected as an Editor’s Highlight – “The manuscript assembles a model to track the 214-year record of N inputs, storage and outputs for two important river basins (Mississippi and Susquehana).

Fereidoun gave an invited talk entitled “Freeze-Thaw Cycles and Soil Biogeochemistry: Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emission”, with co-authors T. Milojevic, D. Oh, C. T. Parsons, C. Smeaton and P. Van Cappellen from the Ecohydrology Research Group. Fereidoun was also co-author in an invited talk by Dr. Susan Natali (Woods Hole Research Center) entitled “A Pan-Arctic Synthesis of Cold Season Carbon Emissions” with 38 other co-authors.