News

The second annual meeting of the Microplastics Fingerprinting project was held as a 2-day meeting from September 18^th - 19^th at the CIGI campus in uptown Waterloo. The aim of the workshop was to review the progress of the work completed over the last 2 years, and exchange ideas about further integration among the different work packages, while deepening collaborations with our external partners.

Philippe participated in a panel discussion entitled, "Protecting the Grand River: Microplastics and environmental stewardship in the Haldimand Tract," organized by Environmental Defence. Besides Philippe, the panel included Courtney Skye of the Six Nations of the Grand River, who is also the founder of Protect the Tract, and Karen Wirsig of Environmental Defence moderating the discussion.

Ecohydrology group MSc student Jane Ye successfully defended her thesis on September 7, 2023 in a virtual defence. Jane's thesis is titled "The Influence of Soil Moisture, Oxygen, and Temperature on Naphthalene Biodegradation and CO₂ and CH₄ effluxes." Her research was supported by the NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grant, and Imperial Oil Limited. Jane was supervised by Drs. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen (both from Earth and Environmental Sciences), and the committee included Drs.

On August 29^th, the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, on behalf of the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and of the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health, announced support for over 4,700 researchers and research projects across Canada.

A three-day workshop on sustainable agriculture in a net-zero economy was held on the Grenfell campus of Memorial University in Newfoundland (MUN). The workshop was organized by Dr. Christina Smeaton, a former ERG Research Associate now an Assistant Professor at MUN. The workshop was attended by about 20 participants, including ERG members Philippe Van Cappellen, Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Saraswati Saraswati.

Ecohydrology group PhD student Jovana Radosavljevic successfully defended her thesis on August 17, 2023 in a hybrid defence. Jovana's thesis is titled "Land use changes and salinization: Impacts on lake phosphorus cycling and water quality." Her research was supported by the Global Water Futures Program. Jovana's examination committee included her supervisors, Drs. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and Philippe Van Cappellen (both from Earth and Environmental Sciences), her advisory committee members, Drs.

The 2023 International Workshop on Surface-Earth System Science was held on August 7-9 at Tianjin University in Tianjin, China. The general theme of the workshop was Advancing Earth System Science and Promoting Interdisciplinary Research.  Philippe gave his online talk on Lake Eutrophication – Recent Advances and Emerging Challenges in the topical session on Processes of Earth System and the Eco-environmental Impacts (Topic 2).

A new paper published in the journal Ecological Informatics presents a long-term annual total P (TP) budget for the Lake St. Clair–Lake Erie system, averaged over a 14-year period, from 2003 to 2016. The paper is authored by ERG members Serghei Bocaniov and Philippe Van Cappellen, together with Don Scavia from the University of Michigan. The results show that the TP output from the system substantially exceeds the sum of the external TP inputs, hence implying a major role of in-lake P mobilization processes.

A new paper published in the journal Sustainability presents the values of three ecosystem services – water filtration, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration – in the Grand River watershed of southern Ontario, Canada. The paper’s first author, Tariq Aziz, is a former ERG PhD student. His co-authors are Alian-Désiré Nimubona from the Department of Economics at Waterloo and Philippe Van Cappellen.

The week of July 9^th- 14^th 2023, Ecohydrology Research Group members present their research at the Goldschmidt 2023 conference in Lyon, France.