News

A fear of dying plays a role in people buying bottled water, even though they know it may not be good for them or the planet, a study from the University of Waterloo has found.

The study suggests that most bottled-water advertising campaigns target a deep psychological vulnerability in humans, compelling them to buy and consume particular products. Bottled water ads specifically trigger our most subconscious fear — driving Canadians to buy billions of litres of water annually. 

A study released today in Nature Geoscience describes how climate change played a major role in the massive catastrophic collapse of two glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau in July and September 2016.

The vaccines used by commercial fish farmers are not protecting fish from disease, according to a new study.

On Thursday, January 18, the Water Institute welcomed members, students, and friends from across campus to tour the Institute’s new space, and to hear remarks from the executive director, Roy Brouwer. 

The University of Waterloo’s Water Institute has awarded a combined total of $72,692 to four research teams as a result of its 2017 fall term seed grant competition. The goal of this program is to catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration, facilitate interaction with international authorities, and to encourage the development of research proposals.

The program awards a total of $150,000 annually, with competitions generally held during the fall and winter terms.

Cold regions are experiencing dramatic changes to regional climate and environmental conditions, bringing about more severe floods, longer drought periods and deterioration of water quality that are putting economies, communities and ecosystems at risk. Six new University of Waterloo-led research projects that are part of the Global Water Futures program, will catalyze interdisciplinary research to help tackle these environmental challenges.

In the 2017 fall term, the Department of Economics offered Waterloo’s graduate and undergraduate students a new elective course on Water Resources Economics (ECON 484/673).

In the past two decades, the world’s ten worst floods have done more than a hundred and sixty-five billion dollars’ worth of damage and driven more than a billion people from their homes. In the summer of 2017 alone, Hurricane Harvey dumped more than fifty inches of rain over Texas, a monster monsoon season damaged more than eight hundred thousand homes in India, and flash floods and mudslides claimed at least five hundred lives in Sierra Leone.