CH contributes to Calgary Herald article

Centre for Hydrology Director Prof. John Pomeroy was asked to contribute to an article in the Calgary Herald, published on 6th April 2013.
The piece looked at the likely prospects for water resources, and risks of both drought and flood, as implied by the spring snowpack on both sides of the Great Divide.
It is available for online viewing here

Opportunities in the Changing Cold Regions Network

The Changing Cold Regions Network (CCRN) is a major new initiative to be led by the Global Institute for Water Security, with substantial participation by members of the Centre for Hydrology, and linking 8 Canadian universities, 4 government agencies and 15 key international academic collaborators.
Participants will study interactions between cryospheric, ecological, hydrological and climate components at multiple scales, with particular emphasis on Western Canada’s rapidly changing cold interior, including the Western Cordillera, Western Boreal Forest, Lowland Permafrost and Prairies, the Saskatchewan, Mackenzie and Peace-Athabasca basins, and the regional climate system.
The network is now seeking a number of world-class post-graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, as detailed in the full listing available in PDF format here. More information about GIWS is available at www.usask.ca/water.

News media cover Marmot Creek Workshop

In late February, the Centre for Hydrology hosted a workshop at its Coldwater Lab (located at the University of Calgary’s BioGeoScience Institute near Kananaskis), to mark 50 years of activity at the nearby Marmot Creek Research Basin.
The meeting generated interest from several local and regional newspapers;
Calgary Herald, 4th March 2013
Rocky Mountain Outlook, 14th March 2013
Rocky Mountain Outlook, 14th February 2013
Calgary Herald, 23rd February 2013
Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 25th February 2013
Rocky Mountain Outlook, 14th March 2013
Information about the workshop, including presentations given by a range of eminent hydrologists and CH alumni, is available here

CH on CKOM

Nicholas Kinar, a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology, was interviewed recently by CKOM – News Talk 650 Radio, about his innovative System for the Acoustic Sensing of Snow (SAS2), which uses sound-waves to infer properties such as density, depth, temperature and wetness.
Details are available on the station’s website, here.

Seminar – 20 March, 2:30pm

The Centre for Hydrology will host a seminar by Dr Kevin Devito, of the University of Alberta’s Department of Biological Sciences, entitled Generalizing groundwater-surface water interactions in riparian interfaces on heterogeneous landscapes – Canada’ s Boreal Plain, on Wednesday 20 March at 2:30pm in Room 144 Kirk Hall.

GIWS Public Lecture for World Water Day

To mark both World Water Day and the first two years of the Global Institute for Water Security’s existence,
Professor Howard Wheater, GIWS Director and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Water Security, will host a public lecture entitled Water Security in Western Canada: Progress and Prospects.
The event (for which the official notice is available here) is to take place from 4 to 6pm on Friday 22nd March, in the Convocation Hall, Peter MacKinnon Building.

Centre for Hydrology In The News

Centre for Hydrology Director Professor John Pomeroy has been asked to contribute insights to several recent newspaper issues;
In the Calgary Herald (March 4th), a piece focused on the unusual rain-on-snow event which led to flooding in the upper Bow River Valley in early June of 2012, and commented on the likely environmental effects of a changing climate in the mountains, foothils and prairies. It also included mention of the recent Marmot Creek Workshop, which was organized by CH.
Other articles, published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and Regina Leader Post of March 2nd, looked at the role of – and need for – hydrologists, and current prospects for those joining the profession.

Postdoctoral Fellow Opportunity: Water Resource Systems

The Global Institute for Water Security and the Department of Civil and Geological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan are seeking applicants for a postdoctoral position in water resource systems.
The successful candidate will contribute to the development of a basin-wide water resource systems modelling framework using optimization-based and simulation-based techniques: this project seeks to
– Integrate socioeconomic and hydrological aspects of water resources;
– Introduce anthropogenic impacts into large scale watershed hydrology;
– Develop tools which facilitate negotiations and decision-making, and reflect the input of researchers, policy makers, and water users.
Full details of the competition are available at
http://www.usask.ca/hydrology/downloads/GIWS_WRS_PDF_Feb2013.pdf

Graduate Student Wins Outstanding Student Paper Award from American Geophysical Union

Chris Marsh won the Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union at its Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California in December 2012 for his presentation Implications of mountain shading on calculating energy for snowmelt using unstructured triangular meshes, based on his MSc thesis in the Centre for Hydrology, Dept. of Geography & Planning. Chris is currently a PhD student in the Centre for Hydrology, co-supervised by John Pomeroy and Howard Wheater.
Congratulations to Chris on this prestigious international award.