News

Philippe attends the 1^st Sino-Canada Workshop on Plateau Lakes Research in Kunming, China, July 18-24, 2015. The Plateau Lakes in Yunnan Province represent one of China’s main freshwater resources. They are, however, experiencing rising anthropogenic pressures, including rapid urbanization, invasive species and non-point source pollution.

Philippe attends the Non-Point Source Pollution and Water Management Workshop in Chongqing, China, July 14-17, 2015. The workshop brings together researchers from the China-Canada Three Gorges Water Science Centre (CCTW) collaborating on nutrient and contaminant sources, fate and impacts in the Three Gorges Reservoir. The collaboration was initiated through the financial support of the Ontario-China Research and Innovation Fund (OCRIF).

Philippe presents a keynote lecture at the Nutrient Cycling on the Modern and Ancient Earth Symposium, 6-7 July at the University of Leeds, UK (LINK). The symposium is being organized in honour of the retirement of Professor Michael D. Krom from the University of Leeds. Dr.

Congratulations to PhD student, Ekaterina Markelova, who was awarded the Best Presentation at the 2015 Petrus PhD Conference at Université de Lorraine in France. Ekaterina's presentation was entitled, "Retardation capacity of argillaceous substrate towards aqueous N, Cr, As and Sb under fluctuating redox conditions Université Grenoble Alpes and CNRS - France". Well done, Ekaterina! 

Congratulations to Alex Driedger, who successfully defended his MSc. thesis entitled, “Plastic Debris in the Laurentian Great Lakes: Classification, Distribution and Environmental Drivers”. Alex was co-supervised by Ecohydrology Group members Dr. Philippe Van Cappellen and Dr. Hans Dürr. Dr. Kristen Mitchell and Dr. Andrea Vander Woude made up the committee. Well done, Alex!

Congratulations to Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Dr. Hans Dürr, who were each awarded 5-year Discovery Grants by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council  (NSERC) of Canada. Dr. Rezanezhad's project is entitled “Response of soil biogeochemistry to freeze-thaw cycles and implications for the soil respiration-climate feedback: A process-oriented experimental approach”, and Dr. Dürr's project is “Groundwater-lake interactions on water quality in the nearshore zone of the Great Lakes: A regional scale modeling approach”.

Dr. Wallace Broecker, Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Columbia University is being awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree form University of Waterloo at today’s convocation ceremony.

A true pioneer, Broecker is arguably one of the most accomplished living geochemists in the world. For more than half a century, his research has refined what we know about the ocean’s effects on climate change.

A new publication by members of Dr. Lingling Wu's and the Ecohydrology research groups and colleagues from the United States presents the first comprehensive data set on stable iron isotope signatures associated with the microbial cycling of iron obtained directly in sediments of a freshwater lake. 

Liu, K., Wu, L., Couture, R.-M., Li, W. and Van Cappellen, P. (2015) Iron isotope fractionation in sediments of an oligotrophic freshwater lake. Earth and Planetary Science Letter, 423, 164-172, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.05.010.

Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen are hosting a two-day workshop to further develop the capacity in hydrobiogeophysics (HBGP) in the Ecohydrology Research Group.

Philippe Van Cappellen joined a delegation of the Water Institute to China. The delegation held talks with researchers and officials from Wuhan University, China University of Geosciences, Southwest University, Chongqing University, China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) and Hohai University.