News

This past weekend, ERG students Danielle Green, Christina Lam, Hang Nguyen, and Asal Jaberansari attended GAN 2023, an environmental sciences and engineering student conference in Gananoque. Hang Nguyen was awarded the Poster Presentation award for her presentation titled “Investigating the controls on microplastic accumulation in stormwater pond sediments”.

The 2023 federal budget includes $650 million over 10 years to support monitoring, assessment, and restoration activities in the watersheds of the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods, St. Lawrence River, Fraser River, Saint John River, Mackenzie River, and Lake Simcoe. Philippe was interviewed by 13 CBC radio stations (see list below) on his views on the importance of this funding initiative.

Current Ecohydrology Research Group student Danielle Green has been awarded NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship for her masters research. Danielle is in the first year of her masters in the Ecohydrology Research Group and will focus on characterizing dissolved organic carbon and measuring its bioavailability in Canada’s browning lakes.

Congratulations to Danielle on this accomplishment!

An article co-authored by ERG group members Bhaleka Persaud and Philippe Van Cappellen, titled “Ten best practices to strengthen stewardship and sharing of water science data in Canada” published in the Hydrological Process  in 2021 received enough downloads during its first 12 months of publication to be a top downloaded article in this journal.

Philippe attended a side event at the UN Water Conference on Committing to Action for Global Freshwater Lakes was held at the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations. The event focused on actions that accelerate positive change for large, global, transboundary freshwater lakes. Speakers from the African and North American Great Lakes organizations shared their experiences and plans for advancing the integrated management of their large lakes.

A delegation from the Water Institute, headed by Roy Brouwer, Executive Director of the Water Institute, is attending the 2023 United Nations Water Conference taking place at the UN Headquarters in New York, 22-24 March. Philippe Van Cappellen is part of the delegation.

Cold regions are warming much faster than the global average, resulting in more frequent and intense freeze thaw cycles (FTCs) in soils. A new paper published in the journal Chemosphere investigated the effects of FTCs on toluene biodegradation using a combined experimental and model approach. The paper is authored by Mehdi Ramezanzadeh, a recent Masters graduate and current research assistant in the Ecohydrology Research Group.

A new paper in Science of the Total Environment presents a reaction-transport model to simulate the multi-year fate and transport of phosphorus (P) in a bioretention cell facility in the greater Toronto metropolitan area.  The paper is authored by Bowen Zhou, a PhD student in ERG. Co-authors from ERG include Mahyar Shafii, Chris T. Parsons, Elodie Passeport, Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Ariel Lisogorsky and Philippe Van Cappellen.

The Ontario Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada, and Conservation Ontario hosted the 2023 Open House for the southern Ontario Groundwater Community on February 21 and 23. The open house objective was to update groundwater researchers, practitioners and water managers on the activities of the respective agencies and collaborators.

The following posters were presented on February 23 by our ERG members

The Ecohydrology Research Group hosted a successful 11th Annual World Wetlands Day Research Symposium at the University of Waterloo on Wednesday February 1, thanks to the efforts not only of our group but also that of wetland researchers across the University.