Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology

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Declining water quality is a growing global issue. As the human population increases, a multitude of factors, from intensive agricultural practices and widespread application of commercial fertilizers, to climate change and wildfires threatening our drinking water supplies, to emerging contaminants from rapid urbanization and concentrated livestock operations, threaten our water resources. Multiple new policies have been developed to improve water quality in our lakes and streams; however, water quality remains a persistent challenge. The proposed Canada Research Chair in Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology strives to improve our ability to manage water resources sustainably at the regional and global scales through three ambitious objectives, each with ground-breaking potential. Specifically, this program will combine top-down analysis (O1) -- using large geospatial datasets to identify watershed functional traits -- and mechanistic modeling that incorporates the effect of both current land use and accumulated nutrient legacies, from decades of fertilizer applications, on water quality trends (O2). The models developed will be used to design water quality solutions (O3), such as wetland restoration and nutrient management, enabling enhanced water protection while meeting the food and energy needs of a growing population. The Chair will catalyze Dr. Basu's vision to establish new, fundamental understanding of nutrient legacies and time lags in human-impacted landscapes and provide a unified framework for creating adaptive management strategies that can accelerate water quality improvement, both nationally and internationally. This world-class research will provide important groundwork for creating policies on nutrient management and ecosystem protection in direct collaboration with conservation agencies (e.g., Grand River Conservation Authority), and regulatory bodies (e.g., Environment and Climate Change Canada - ECCC, and US Environmental Protection Agency). With growing environmental pressures that place ecosystems and water resources at risk, the proposed Chair will contribute at a fundamental level to our ability to alleviate these pressures and to devise positive, constructive solutions to complex environmental problems. It will ultimately help bolster a leadership position for Canada in the protection of our most valuable resources.