News

People pay top dollar for ‘premium’ brands indistinguishable in blind taste tests from tap water – is it about status, wellness or something more fundamental?

Last year, judges at the 28th International Berkeley Springs WaterTasting competition deemed the best bottled water in the world to be an Australian brand “infused with the sound frequencies of love, the moon, and light spectrums of the rainbow”.

Artificial Intelligence is used to track patterns that could help tackle climate change challenges

All signs point toward a future affected by climate change. 

From higher temperatures to droughts and more extreme weather, experts are searching for ways to sustain our growing population, as well as our planet. 

Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Honourable Catherine McKenna, has announced recipients of the highly competitive “Advancing Climate Change Science in Canada” initiative. Of the nine recipients announced today, two projects led by Waterloo researchers were selected for funding over three years.

In a new paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Policy, authors Tariq Aziz and Water Institute member Philippe Van Cappellen compare the spatial distribution and use intensity across Southern Ontario of a bundle of six ecosystem services: water provisioning and supply, water quality, carbon sequestration, carbon storage, flood regulation, and nature-based tourism.

Dr. Homa Kheyrollah Pour, a member of Ecohydrology research group, has been named the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Remote Sensing of Environmental Change and will join the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) starting July 1^st, 2019.  Homa is an expert in using satellite observations and field data to study cold regions hydrology.

For resource managers charged with maintaining important assets like croplands or fisheries, quantitative modelling is a critical tool. But these sophisticated decision-support models often overlook an essential element of resource management: governance.

In a new study, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, experts and stakeholders, shows that discounting factors of governance could fundamentally compromise the models officials rely on to inform sound resource management strategies.

Despite Sub-Saharan Africa facing protracted water problems, only one per cent of universities in the sub-region offer water education programs, a study has found.

According to the study, higher education related to water is key to building capacity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal that focuses on water and sanitation for all by 2030. Thus, the study assessed 28,077 institutions of higher education for water-related programs.

Water Institute member Fereidoun Rezanezhad, Assistant Professor in Waterloo’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, led a series of workshops and meetings to further collaboration between the China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES) and Water Institute members with a specific focus on soil-wa