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.

“We’re one of the first 13 sites in North America to trial insect-based biocontrol for invasive phragmites,” says Water Institute member Dr. Rebecca Rooney. “This offers hope for chemical free invasive phragmites control.”

By Media Relations

Within the rapidly changing landscape of data providers, governments must address concerns over who collects and uses data to support the public interest. Water Institute member Dr. Peter Johnson, a geographer at the University of Waterloo, is an expert on spatial data and navigating the complexities of this evolving landscape.

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.

Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) has announced their winners and finalists for the 2022-2023 GRADflix competition, which included a strong turnout of grad students from the water sector!

If you are not familiar with the competition, GRADflix is an annual research communication competition where participants create a video or animation no longer than 60 seconds that describes their research.

A University of Waterloo press resease.

Small, isolated wetlands that are full for only part of the year are often the first to be removed for development or agriculture, but a new study shows that they can be twice as effective in protecting downstream lake or river ecosystems than if they were connected to them. 

Using a new method involving satellite imagery and computer modelling, researchers from the University of Waterloo found that since these small wetlands are disconnected, pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous get trapped. This is the first study to use satellite data for estimating nutrient retention.

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.

Springer Nature has launched Volume 1, Issue 1 of its latest Journal Nature Water,offering a new avenue for the publication of the latest research and discovery related to water resources.

Nature Water will be a monthly, exclusively online publication publishing world-class water research, spanning natural sciences, engineering and social sciences.

A message from the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

Water Institute memberProfessor Jimmy Lin has been named a 2022 ACM Fellow for his contributions to question answering, information retrieval, and natural language processing.

The Association for Computing Machinery is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM fellowships are conferred to the top 1 percent of the association’s members, and the prestigious recognition indicates outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community.

World-renowned hydrogeologist and groundwater advocate Dr. John Cherry to present the Water Institute’s WaterTalks lecture on Wednesday, January 18, 2023

The Water Institute in collaboration with the Faculty of Science, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is delighted to welcome Dr. John Cherry, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Hydrogeology, as the opening lecturer for the 2023 WaterTalks lecture series. The lecture will be presented on Wednesday, January 18 and is free to the campus community, alumni and the public.