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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.

Philippe spent two days at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) as a member of the external Review Committee (December 5-6, 2016). The site visit included tours of the facilities and meetings with university administrators, GLIER faculty members, graduate students and staff. GLIER is a graduate research and training institute at the the University of Windsor.

The Water Institute has awarded Seed Grant Program funding to five research proposals. Members of the Ecohydrology Research Group are involved in two of funded projects:

Philippe gave the inaugural seminar of the Laurier Institute for Water Science (LIWS) Seminar Series. LIWS is a multidisciplinary, collaborative undertaking focusing on both Canadian and global water issues, including the effects of climate change, the sustainability of healthy aquatic and coastal ecosystems, and the development of regulations and policy related to water use.

Contact: Professor Jim McGeer, LIWS Director

In a new paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Ecohydrology group members, Helen Powley and Philippe Van Cappellen, and collaborator Michael Krom, report on the sensitivity of dissolved oxygen distributions within the Mediterranean Sea to future climate driven changes in its thermohaline circulation. The results indicate that the oxygenation of the Mediterranean Sea is quite resilient to the projected changes in circulation.