Webinar Series

Serghei Bocaniov is a research associate supervised by Philippe Van Cappellen in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Nitin Singh is a postdoc supervised by PI Nandita Basu in Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Lamisa Malik is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is supervised by PI Dr. Nandita Basu. She has seven years of academic research experience in the field of water, hydrology, and integrated watershed management.

Yichun shares her presentation titled "Willingness to pay for water quality improvements of the Great Lakes: A discrete choice experiment". She shares the research she has been working on as part of the Lake Futures project since September 2020, focusing her current research on Great Lakes quality evaluation and related cost-benefit analyses.

Zahra shares her presentation titled "The role of shallow basins and the littoral zone in modulating lake P cycling: a mass balance analysis of Lake Erie". The focus of her research has been the effects of anthropogenic activities on the freshwater environment, and her current role is to develop models to simulate nutrient cycling in lakes and reservoirs.

Michael shares his presentation titled "Lake Ice as a Predictor of Algal Biomass in North American Great Lakes". His research uses observational analysis to research climatic and environmental drivers of harmful algal blooms. 

Sandra George, Great Lakes Program Coordinator at Environment and Climate Change Canada

Ram Yerubandi, Research Manager at Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Tom Bruulsema is a Chief Scientist with Plant Nutrition Canada. He’s been involved with developing the 4R Certification program in the USA and in Canada. He has been recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, the Soil Science Society of America, and the Canadian Society of Agronomy. Education B.S. 1983 University of Guelph (Agriculture) M.S. 1985 University of Guelph (Crop Science) Ph.D. 1994 Cornell University (Soil Science).

Tom introduced Plant Nutrition Canada, its agricultural research priorities and how the organization supports responsible management of plant nutrition.

Sept 23, 2020

Nandita Basu, PI of Lake Futures,Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences, Director of the Collaborative Water Program

Sustainable Urbanscapes: Nutrient Cycling in the Greater Toronto Area

Increasingly, humans in the developed world are living in cities. These urban centres disrupt nutrient cycles by importing large quantities of food, and exporting waste to nearby water bodies. Investigating flows of nutrients in urban centres can help to identify opportunities to increase food security and reduce freshwater pollution. Join Nandita Basu, as she shares the latest research on nutrient budgets for nitrogen and phosphorus in the Greater Toronto Area. Learn about impacts urban centers have on their surrounding environment, and opportunities to build a more circular economy.

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1 page Summary (PDF)

Sept 16, 2020

1-2 pm EDT

Elaine Ho, PhD Candidate, Social and Ecological Sustainability (Water), School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

A new approach and lessons learned: how co-creation, shared spaces, and diversity can improve water monitoring design

When designing conventional water monitoring programs, the design process is focused on establishing the right monitoring parameters, methodologies, and schedules.  Community values are not usually considered and there is limited coordination with decision-makers.  Therefore, these programs often fail to consider how the results will inform management decisions or meet the needs of the local community.  In this presentation, Elaine proposes a new way of developing monitoring programs that consider cumulative effects, are co-created by diverse stakeholders, and connect monitoring to broader river or lake management decisions.  The lower Grand River and nearshore Lake Erie was the focus of her research, and the new monitoring framework that emerged is used a case study for discussion. Elaine will share lessons learned throughout this process, highlighting benefits of community and Indigenous engagement and how to overcome associated challenges.

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Presentation Slide Deck (PDF)

1 page Summary (PDF)

Sept 9, 2020

1-2 pm EDT

Bryan Tolson, Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Subwatershed-based lake and river routing products for hydrologic and land surface models applied over Canada

Lakes and reservoirs have important impacts on hydrological and biogeochemical functions of a landscape but are often overlooked in regional hydrological models. This is important in Canada where we have a huge number of lakes. In this webinar, Bryan Tolson, will share recent work of Han et al. (2020) deriving a suite of Pan-Canadian subwatershed-based lake and river routing GIS products at multiple spatial resolutions. These publicly available data products supply all the necessary hydrologic routing model inputs. All Water Survey of Canada streamflow gauging stations are used to define subwatershed outlets in the products. The routing product is used to inform a hydrologic routing model in the Raven hydrologic modelling framework, and is the first demonstration of Raven in routing-only mode. The Hudson Bay drainage basin (40% of Canada), including more than 20,000 river reaches and 10,000 lakes, will be simulated as a case study. A corresponding GIS lake and river routing toolbox under development will also be highlighted that puts the watershed and lake discretization decisions into the modeller’s hands instead of relying solely on the small set of products in Han et al. (2020).

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1 page Summary (PDF)

Presentation Slide Deck (PDF)

August 12, 2020

1-2pm EDT

Roy Brouwer, Executive Director, the Water Institute

What are the Great Lakes worth? A study of Canadian and US residents’ willingness to pay for water quality improvements in the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are immensely valuable, providing economic, social, and environmental benefits to those who live, work, and recreate in the region. But, water quality in the Great Lakes is threatened by human activities, like urban development and agriculture. Managing these threats requires investments, and ultimately poses the question: What are the Great Lakes worth? Join Roy Brouwer, as he seeks to answer this question by sharing research updates on how much Canadian and American residents are willing to pay for water quality improvements in the Great Lakes. 

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1 page Summary (PDF)

August 5, 2020 

1-2pm EDT

Philippe Van Cappellen, Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Ecohydrology

The role of dams and the nearshore zone on phosphorus flows along the river-lake interface 

With continued concern for eutrophication in the lower Great Lakes, scientists, government and stakeholders continue to work together towards effective management solutions. In these freshwater systems, phosphorus is a main driver of algal blooms. Our ability to manage phosphorus in these systems to improve water quality is limited by our understanding of phosphorus flows and cycling along rivers and into large lakes. Join Philippe Van Cappellen, as he shares the latest research progress on phosphorus flows along the river-large lake continuum and how these are impacted by dams and nearshore biogeochemical cycling. 

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1 page Summary (PDF)

July 29, 2020

1-2pm EDT

Nandita Basu, PI of Lake Futures,Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences, Director of the Collaborative Water Program

Watershed Nutrient Legacies and their Impact on Current and Future Water Quality in the Lake Erie Basin

With increasingly frequent and severe algal blooms in the Great Lakes, all levels of government and stakeholders have been engaged in developing policies and management solutions to reduce nutrient loading to the lakes. The term ‘legacy nutrients’ has been used to describe the amount of nutrients that have built up in soils over the years and are expected to delay the effect of management solutions.  Join Nandita Basu, as she shares the latest research progress and findings on modelling legacy nutrients, N and P, and their impacts on water quality in the Great Lakes region. 

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1 page Summary (PDF)