News

UNESCO launched IHP’s 8^th phase (2014-2021) entitled “Water Security: Responses to Local, Regional and Global Challenges” (IHP-VIII, see: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002251/225103e.pdf). IHP-VIII will be built around the following 6 interrelated Themes: 1) Water-related disasters and hydrological change, 2) Groundwater in a changing world, 3) Addressing water scarcity and quality, 4) Water and human settlements of the future, 5) Ecohydrology, engineering harmony for a sustainable world, and 6) Water education, key for water security.

Philippe Van Cappellen attended the 2014 Canadian Geophysical Union conference, a Joint annual meeting with Canadian Society of Soil Science and Mantle Convection, held on May 4-7, 2014 in Banff, Canada. Ecohydrology Research Group members are presented:

Invited talk by Philippe Van Cappellen: Soil Respiration in Wetlands - A Biogeochemical Perspective. Co-authors: Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Kim Van Meter and Nandita Basu

A reporter with the Weather Network visited UW on Tuesday to interview Philippe about the ubiquity of debris in the world's oceans, which has been brought to light recently with difficulty in locating the Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Philippe highlighted the problem of widespread debris and explained the nature of ocean currents pushing debris to all parts of the oceans.

Read more: www.theweathernetwork.com/insider-insights/articles/how-much-garbage-is-actually-in-our-oceans/24452/

From March 24 to 26, Philippe was a guest at the Grand Water Research Institute GWRI) of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel (http://gwri.technion.ac.il). GWRI is Israel’s leading institute of water research. Philippe’s visit centered on exploring potential areas of collaboration between GWRI and the Water Institute of the University of Waterloo. In addition to discussions with GWRI faculty, Philippe gave a seminar and visited some of the research facilities. 

Philippe Van Cappellen was a member of the committee reviewing the Environmental and Biological Systems Science and the Climate and Carbon Sciences programs within the Earth Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California. The review took place on March 18 and 19. 

A new publication, Modelling phosphorus loading and algal blooms in a nordic, by Raoul-Marie Couture and co-authors is in press. The study presents a network of process-based mass-balance models for phosphorus dynamics in catchments and lakes provides a new approach to simulate the effect of land-use and climate change on water quality. The results suggest that good land use practices can offset the detrimental effects of climate change on water quality.