News

Originally published by the Faculty of Science.

Waterloo biologists, in partnership with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the University of Toronto, are working on a North American pilot program that uses moths as a management tool to control the invasive plant threatening Canadian wetlands.

Waterloo graduate student Rafaela de Freitas Maltauro, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, has been awarded a scholarship honouring one of the pioneers of fluvial geomorphology.

Water Institute member Rebecca Rooney discusses the value of wetlands and the risk they face in Ontario

By Angelica Marie Sanchez, University Relations

Thursday, February 2 marks World Wetlands Day, an international government agreement acknowledging the importance of wetlands and their ecological role in conserving our ecosystems.

“Wetlands are these climate change superheroes,” says Water institute member Dr. Rebecca Rooney, a wetland ecologist and professor in the Department of Biology. “Wetlands are a portfolio of ecosystem services: including flood prevention, breaking down pesticides, storing large amounts of carbon, and provide habitat for more than 32 per cent of Ontario species at risk who rely on these wetlands to mitigate climate change.”

In the latest research from the forWater Network, scientists have found that fires in forested source water regions can significantly accelerate fine sediment transport from hillslopes to receiving streams. The mobilization of fine sediment and associated nutrients, such as phosphorus (P), into high quality surface waters can substantially increase primary productivity, which can severely degrade water quality, threaten aquatic ecosystem health, and challenge drinking water treatability to the point of service disruptions.