News

Minister Chagger (far right) announces Waterloo grant winners, including Water Institute members David Blowes (second from right) and James R. Craig (third from right).

Water research was among several areas to receive substantial government support this past week from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Canada Research Chairs (CRC) grants. The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism, and member of parliament for Waterloo, revealed seven University of Waterloo award recipients — including Water Institute members David Blowes and James R. Craig — Friday during a special announcement in the University’s Science Teaching Complex.

Water - On Exhibition drew Waterloo students, across a wide range of disciplines, eager to showcase their research and designs on water as a renewable resource.

Held on Oct. 6 at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge, ON, the exhibition was a collaboration between Students of the Water Institute Graduate Section (SWIGS) and the BRIDGE Centre of Architecture + Design.

The Waterloo Chronicle and the Waterloo Region Record published an op-ed by Water Institute member and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Professor Barry Warner.

Warner studies the dynamics of natural, restored, and created wetlands using a variety of ecological and paleoecological indicators. These methods are used to study wetland ecosystems across a variety of spatial scales and temporal scales.

$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.

Forests, wetlands and grasslands all provide “watershed services” by enhancing water quality and supply, biodiversity and carbon storage. They have economic value but unfortunately their market price is $0, says the executive director of the Water Institute.

The green water of Rio’s outdoor Olympic pools has baffled athletes, organizers and spectators but not Waterloo Biologist Kirsten Müller. She is fairly certain that algae is the culprit.

Although low chlorine levels, minerals and copper can also cause water to look green, it’s the cloudy appearance of the water that suggests the presence of an algal biomass.

Read more.

Seven full-length videos are now available below that feature many of the guest speakers who presented at the Ecohydrology Research Group Research Symposium.

The research group, with support from the Water Institute, held a full-day research symposium on June 16, 2016, featuring coastal ecologists, watershed model developers, and environmental policy researchers from Europe and North America.

By Amy Geddes, the Water Institute and Sarah J. Brown, Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change. This is the latest in a series of #UWCommunity stories that feature Waterloo in the community. 

Usually, you count yourself lucky to have avoided natural disasters first-hand. But Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters, the newest exhibit at THEMUSEUM in downtown Kitchener, intentionally immerses visitors in the natural disaster experience via interactive displays.

Sponsored in part by the University of Waterloo in a three-way partnership between Community Relations, the Water Institute and the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change (IC3), visitors of all ages are invited to stand in the eye of a tornado, build a volcano, and move tectonic plates. A dialogue series of public lectures later in the fall, some featuring Waterloo faculty members, will augment the experience.

As residents try to resume their lives more than a month after a ferocious wildfire forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray, crucial questions about its impact on their water supply still have no clear answers.