The Water Institute’s vision is to significantly advance the sustainable use and management of water for the benefit of the environment, economy, and society. In realizing this vision, we believe it is imperative to link our research to end-users, including governments, the private sector, and civil society, to increase the impact of our work. WaterResearch has been designed to make that link, and to facilitate knowledge transfer and exchange with academics, practitioners, students, and other water-sector stakeholders interested in, and able to act on, cutting-edge water research.
In this issue, we have a diverse, multidisciplinary blend of researchers working across departments and faculties, published in Canadian journals like the Journal of Great Lakes Research and the Canadian Water Resources Journal, and high profile international journals such as Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. These reflect water management issues at local, regional and global scales, combining water science, engineering, governance, and economics.
Articles with a global outlook include the research by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Ecohydrology Philippe Van Cappellen and his colleagues, examining the impact of river damming on the global perturbation of organic carbon cycling.
Hyung-Sool Lee and colleagues from the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biology focus on another potential global warming gas. A niche discovered between extracellular electron transfer and anaerobic oxidation of methane, an important process for understanding the global flux of methane in relation to the global carbon cycle, could lower estimates of global methane fluxes.
The risks of climate change are addressed by Daniel Henstra from the Department of Political Science and Jason Thistlethwaite from the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development, and they present a policy toolkit for municipalities to share flood risk management and damage costs.
Two articles reflect a regional perspective on water management issues. In one, co-authored by Distinguished Professor Emeritus Bill Taylor together with colleagues from the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, long-term water quality trends in more than 50 watersheds in the Great Lakes Basin were analyzed, showing how in-stream concentrations have been changing over several decades. The other article, co-authored by Derek Robinson in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management and Rebecca Rooney in the Department of Biology, provides landscape metrics to guide large-scale wetlands reclamation programs in Canada and elsewhere.
The stress experienced by peatlands, which comprise more than 90 percent of Alberta’s wetlands, from oil and gas development and associated infrastructure such as road construction was researched by Richard Petrone and Merrin Macrae from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management in the Athabasca Oil Sands region of Alberta.
A similarly highly topical issue is addressed by Sarah Wolfe from the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, investigating pro- and anti-bottled water campaigns, and how the different communication and education elements of these campaigns alter consumer behaviour.
Finally, one of the articles in this issue focuses on a new book edited by Larry Swatuk, from the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development, on the Water-Food-Energy nexus in the Global South. According to the United Nations, the Water-Food-Energy nexus is central to sustainable development, while Professor Swatuk adds the quintessential gender dimension to the ongoing debate and research agenda in this field.
I am excited to be sharing this innovative and impactful science with you through WaterResearch, and hope that you find our newsletter informative!
Professor Roy Brouwer
Executive Director
the Water Institute
University of Waterloo
