News

This week, researchers from Lake Futures met with researchers across all Global Water Futures (GWF) projects at the GWF 2018 Annual Science Meeting, held at McMaster University, in partnership with the Six Nations of the Grand River. The conference spanned over four days (June 3-6, 2018), with plenty of time for plenary talks, poster-viewing, and collaborating with fellow scientists.

The 2018 Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) Annual Meeting was held in Detroit, Michigan, from May 20th to 24th. The full program booklet for the conference can be found on the SFS website.

Lake Futures researchers were involved in the the following sessions presented at the conference:

Dr. James Craig, Dr. Bryan Tolson, and Dr. Kevin Shook (University of Saskatchewan) will be teaching CIVE 781: Principles of Hydrologic Modelling at the University of Waterloo from June 4th to 8th. The professional short course will address the creation, development, and application of watershed hydrology models.

While this year's course is full, those interested can be put on next year's notification list.

Elaine Ho, a PhD student working with the Lake Futures project, will represent the University of Waterloo during the launch of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Canada. Specifically, she will be representing Sustainable Development Goal 6: clean water and sanitation. Congratulations on this achievement, Elaine!

On Friday, six members of our team met with researchers at Environment Canada to discuss the Lake Futures project. The two groups exchanged information to see where our projects and programs intersect with respect to current plans, and what types of environmental data will be required moving forward.

The attendees of the meeting were: Philippe Van Cappellen, Serghei Bocaniov, Kiana Zolfaghari, Homa Kheyrollah Pour, Igor Markelov, and Tatjana Milojevic from Lake Futures, and Sean Backus, Alice Dove, Caren Binding, Luis Leon, and David Depew from Environment Canada.

Yesterday, researchers Kim Van Meter, Guy Tenkouano, Frederick Cheng, Amanda Niederkorn, Roland Hall, and Lisa Kester travelled to the Belwood Reservoir to gather sediment core samples. Luckily, they were greeted by beautiful weather.

The Global Water Futures (GWF) Inception Meeting took place this week, on January 22nd and 23rd, at Wilfrid Laurier University. The meeting featured presentations from Principal Investigators and researchers from the GWF team, including Lake Futures PI, Dr. Nandita Basu.

For more information, please visit the Global Water Futures website, and the Lake Futures Inception Meeting presentation, posted under our new Resources tab.

Professor Mark Servos, Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection and professor of Biology, Nandita Basu, professor in the Departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Civil and Environmental Engineering, and post-doctoral fellow, Kim Van Meter, were prominently featured in Kitchener-Waterloo’s local newspaper.

For many Canadians, summer time means time at the lake, swimming, fishing, boating, and relaxing. Nothing can spoil this experience like blue-green mats of muck, caused by algal blooms. These blooms negatively affect not only recreational activities – but also put drinking water source, property values, wildlife, and human health at risk. In the 1970s, scientists discovered that the nutrient phosphorus caused algal blooms, which led to new regulations and improved sewage treatment. Nevertheless, blooms continue to plague many Canadian lakes.