News

Adrian Mellage, a PhD student in the Ecohydrology Research Group, has completed a successful two-month research exchange at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. The exchange was part of an ongoing research collaboration between the Ecohydrology Research Group at the University of Waterloo and the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Technion.

Philippe Van Cappellen and Kim Van Meter visited the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig on March 13-15. They held a series of high-level discussions to explore potential collaborations on the topic of coupled biogeochemistry-hydrology modelling. Central to the discussions were the challenges and opportunities in scale-dependent watershed modelling. A promising area of collaboration that emerged was the merging of biogeochemical functions into UFZ’s mesoscale hydrological model - stay tuned! 

The 2017 Director's review of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) took place on February 21-22. Philippe participated in the review as a member of the Expert Assessment Committee. The two days were filled with presentations of the science being carried out by EESA researchers, plus discussions with research staff.

Visit the EESA website for more information on their activities.

A new partnership has been established between Qatar University, United Arab Emirates University, and the University of Waterloo for a 3 year collaborative research project investigating the fate and transport of hydrocarbon pollutants in groundwater. The project is funded through the Qatar National Research Fund, which awarded a grant of $672,000 USD to University of Waterloo researchers.  Two of the researchers, who are the project leads for the UW team, are Ecohydrology Research Group members, Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen.

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.