News

Climate change is significantly impacting Canada’s water resources. From melting permafrost, to more pervasive algal blooms, to increased flooding, these impacts are only expected to increase in the future. Three professors from the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute have been awarded significant grants to develop new, innovative technologies and to deliver new management approaches to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of Canada’s water resources in the face of climate change.

Today, University of Waterloo Earth scientists received a $1.9M grant from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to examine greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural systems, and the impacts of alternative land-use practices and beneficial management practices (BMPs) on greenhouse gases.

Congratulations to Water Institute members Laura Hug and Janusz Pawliszyn, who will receive a combined total of $2M through the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) and Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF).

During World Water Day celebrations on March 22, the Water Institute and the de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation announced an exciting three-year partnership that will combine water expertise and technology to help mitigate the threats facing our Great Lakes.

Roy Brouwer, Executive Director, Water Institute; Claude Perras, Executive Director, de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation

Collaborative Water Program student, Danielle Lindamood, was accepted into the "Water Innovation Lab - India" program in the fall of 2016. It brought together 35 students and water practitioners from around the world for a two-week field experience in locations around India. She spent two weeks overseas exploring different water problems and contexts, and presenting innovative ideas for solutions.

Below she has written about her experience in India and her experience in being a part of the Water Institute’s Collaborative Water Program.

Yesterday, Waterloo’s Water Institute and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The MOU formalizes the commitment to continue collaboration between China’s largest environmental research institute and the Water Institute in water management research, education and training.

Water Institute member and architecture professor, Elizabeth English, is leading a team of Waterloo School of Architecture researchers who want to build a floating pavilion in a flood zone of the Grand River.

Four researchers from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences are the co-recipients of a $672,000 USD grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) to study the fate of groundwater pollutants in arid regions.

The Waterloo team, all members of the Water Institute, are part of a consortium including researchers from Qatar University, United Arab Emirates University, Utrecht University, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, and Université Libre de Bruxelles.

A diagram representing Hug's "tree of life."

Biology professor Laura Hug’s A New View of the Tree of Life is ranked one of the most-discussed journal articles of 2016, according to Altmetric’s top 100 articles of 2016 list.

$78 million from the Government of Canada will position the country as a global hub for leading-edge, user-driven water science for the world’s cold regions. The University of Waterloo’s Water Institute will be a key partner on the University of Saskatchewan-led Global Water Futures initiative.