Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
“You wake up in the morning and you go to your computer to work … and you look outside and it’s raining ashes,” said the former Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) researcher at the University of Saskatchewan (USask). Aubry-Wake’s research article “Fire and Ice: The Impact of Wildfire-Affected Albedo and Irradiance on Glacier Melt” was published in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) journal Earth’s Future in April 2022.
Dr. Jeffrey McDonnell (PhD) says he is “bursting with gratitude” after being awarded the title of distinguished professor. McDonnell—the associate director of the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) and a professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability (SENS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask)—was one of seven USask faculty members to be named a distinguished professor in 2022.
Researchers recognized in this list have published multiple academic papers that rank in the top one per cent of citations in their fields for the year, as analyzed by the global Web of Science—a database of bibliographic citations that covers the various journals of medical, scientific and social sciences. Dr. Jay Famiglietti (PhD), executive director of GIWS and Canada 150 Research Chair in Hydrology and Remote Sensing, is a leading hydrologist and has previously served as a senior water scientist in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Wastewater samples in Saskatoon are seeing a major increase in the Omicron variant since it was detected for the first time in the city last Tuesday. The latest samples tested by the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) at the University of Saskatchewan show Omicron constitutes 64.1 per cent the overall COVID-19 viral load in the Saskatoon sample. It is an increase of 808.2 per cent since the variant was first detected in Saskatoon wastewater on Dec. 21. The viral load in Saskatoon's wastewater has increased by 87.7 per cent since then.
Wastewater samples in Saskatoon have detected the Omicron variant for the first time. The latest samples tested by the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS) at the University of Saskatchewan show Omicron constitutes 32.8 per cent the overall SARS-CoV-2 viral load in the Saskatoon sample. The GIWS saw 26.2 per cent decrease in evidence of COVID-19 in Saskatoon's wastewater compared to the previous week.
