Water Institute faculty members lead various research groups that include post-doctoral researchers, graduate students and staff. In addition, faculty members collaborate in various research clusters that focus on specific water-related issues, challenges or areas of common interest.
Aquatic Ecosystems
Understanding the ecology, microbiology and toxicology of our rivers, lakes and oceans is key to protecting and sustaining them.
Repairing and enhance ecosystem processes and components, to improve their ecosystem services.
Understanding physical processes that link the atmosphere to oceans and land masses is key to understanding weather, climate change and the global water balance.
Understanding chemical, physical, geological and biological processes that are linked to the hydrologic cycle, how those processes relate to the natural environment and how humans impact the ecohydrologic cycle is vital to effective watershed management.
Understanding regional groundwater systems, identifying approaches to manage and protect systems from contamination and developing approaches to remediate polluted subsurfaces.
Understanding river and stream sensitivity to change in climate and land use through a combination of fieldwork and computer modelling.
Understanding the limnology of lake systems and the hydrodynamics of lakes and oceans.
Understanding the composition, dispersion and movement of snow and ice hydrology, including Arctic ice flows, freeze-thaw water cycles and the snowmelt events that dominate surface water hydrology.
The Sustainable Futures Initiative builds on and elevates the research, education and innovation activities taking place within three of Waterloo’s research institutes, the Waterloo Climate Institute, the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Water Institute, to catalyze new collaborations and provide a more holistic approach to achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Understanding water-related human health impacts to identify approaches to improve access to clean water and suitable sanitation.
Understanding the future of the global water economy, balancing the often-opposing goals of community, industrial and ecological interests.
Investigating various governance approaches that define political, social, economic and administrative systems that influence the use and management of water.
Developing state-of-the-art analytical methods and innovative instrumentation such as a "lab-on-a-chip" or nanotechnology-based devices that can quickly and cost-effectively detect biological and chemical contaminants.
Developing processes and technologies for detecting and removing pathogens and emerging contaminants from drinking water supplies and determining effective and efficient processes to treat stormwater and wastewater.
Understanding wetland and peatland hydrology and ecology, carbon budgets and restoration approaches.