Philippe visited China University of Geosciences (CUG) in Wuhan China on November 13-17. The visit included in-depth discussions on collaborations between Waterloo’s Ecohydrology Research Group (ERG) and CUG’s Environmental Hydrogeology Group (EHG).
The Ecohydrology Research Group met with the City of Kitchener’s Sanitary and Stormwater Utilities Department to provide updates on two NSERC Alliance funded projects in which the City is a partner.
Members of the Ecohydrology Research Group volunteered to facilitate kids’ science activities at the University of Waterloo’s Science Open House on Saturday, October 28th. Over 4,000 people attended the Science Open House and Gem and Mineral show this year!
The Second Joint Symposium of the International Societies for Environmental Biogeochemistry and Subsurface Microbiology was held in Banff on 22-28 October. Philippe Van Cappellen, Jovana Radosavljevic, and Erin Griffiths attended.
A new paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences presents the results of analyses of two sediment cores from Lake Wilcox, a kettle lake located in the greater Toronto area. The results give insight on the impacts of land use/land cover changes on lake P biogeochemistry, and into the impact of road salt-caused salinization on lake ecosystems.
The second annual meeting of the Microplastics Fingerprinting project was held as a 2-day meeting from September 18th - 19th 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 29th, 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.