Research programs dedicated to the environment, particularly water security, are a key component of McMaster University’s focus on advancing human and societal health and well-being. Many of our researchers work with local, national, and international governments to protect the global water supply.

Developing watershed management strategies

Altaf Arain, Director of McMaster University’s Centre for Climate Change, guides municipalities and conservation authorities in developing watershed management strategies to offset the effects of shifts in land use and climate change. Extensive land use changes, agricultural activities and forest harvesting in the Great Lakes region are putting pressure on this key source of drinking water.

A creek runs through it: Students help set up new outdoor teaching and research lab 

Priyanka Hire and Kate Pearson are setting up the latest lab in the School of Earth, Environment & Society – on the the banks of Ancaster Creek. 

They’re looking for places to install a network of sensors and stations that’ll make up the new McMaster Watershed and Ecosystems Living Lab (Mac WELL). 

The outdoor teaching and research lab will continuously monitor the health of the creek – a vital coldwater habitat that supports aquatic species dependent on cool temperatures to spawn and survive. 

PhD student enlists citizen scientists and AI researchers for wetland research 

Climate change had created a problem for professor Pat Chow-Fraser’s Wetlands Ecosystem Research Lab. In 2019, their nets came up empty on Georgian Bay. Pat and her team of student researchers had been using nets for years to monitor fish communities in the bay’s wetlands. But climate change was causing unprecedented and extreme swings in water levels. That had led to a new zone of flooded dead trees and shrubs that blocked fish from moving into their wetland nursery habitat. The fish were staying in deeper water that nets couldn’t reach. Pat set aside money from a Great Lakes Protection Initiative grant from Environment and Climate Change Canada and asked Danielle Montocchio if she wanted to help solve the problem. Danielle’s a senior doctoral student in the Department of Biology who’s studying coastal wetland community ecology. 

Advancing river and stream research

Brad Fairley and Margaret Gadsby, McMaster alumni and philanthropists,  , funded a research chair dedicated to studying river formation and restoration in Hamilton and Dundas, Ont. The inaugural chair, Elli Papangelakis, will focus on fluvial geomorphology, exploring how rivers interact with their environment and evolve in response to human activities and climate change, supported by Fairley’s extensive experience in stream restoration.

Fish on drugs: Researchers sound alarm

In a commentary recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability, a group of researchers call for the development of greener drugs that are both effective for their users and able to break down quickly in the environment.

The group includes McMaster’s Karen Kidd, a leading expert on water pollution and its impact on aquatic life, who holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in Environment and Health in the department of Biology.

Students help set up new outdoor teaching and research lab  

Two students are setting up the latest lab in the School of Earth, Environment & Society — on the the banks of Ancaster Creek.

They’re looking for places to install a network of sensors and stations that’ll make up the new McMaster Watershed and Ecosystems Living Lab (Mac WELL).

The outdoor teaching and research lab will continuously monitor the health of the creek – a vital coldwater habitat that supports aquatic species dependent on cool temperatures to spawn and survive.

The creek runs through much of Hamilton – including the McMaster Forest and West Campus – and into Lake Ontario through the Cootes Paradise wetland behind the university.

That vision became a reality when the Ratford Trust provided funding to buy the sensors and stations that will measure real-time changes in water quality, water storage and runoff, weather and climate, stream morphology and remotely sensed land cover and vegetation.

“After years of planning, it’s exciting to see Mac WELL get off the ground,” says Papangelakis. “Our lab will be another way for McMaster to help solve major environmental challenges through research, teaching and citizen science.”

Undergraduate and graduate students will play a pivotal role in making that happen, joining through co-ops, courses and capstone projects. In the process, they’ll gain hands-on experience measuring environmental parameters, using state-of-the-art equipment and analyzing datasets.

MacWater Diagnostic Research Initiative 

Our vision is to create a new interdisciplinary center for integrating research and technology development towards low-cost, real-time, portable devices that can analyze real-world environmental water samples for biological and chemical contaminants. 

Integrated low-cost, real-time monitoring of Ontario recreational and municipal water sources: 

New technologies, particularly in engineering and bioinformatics, will facilitate the design and manufacture of relatively inexpensive, re-configurable diagnostic devices that will provide robust information needed to make critical water quality evalations. 

There are many imminent challenges maintaining high water quality in the heavily-populated Southern Ontario region. Increasing population, increasing agricultural intensity and high potential for contamination of water sources contribute to the growing urgency in using robust technology to provide integrated real-time management of analysis data to provide decision-makers with the tools to ensure continued water safety. 

Student Body – Mac Water 

As of January 2024, 26 long-term drinking water advisories persist in Ontario’s First Nation communities, cautioning against unsafe water based on quality tests. We aim to raise awareness for relevant water issues in Ontario’s local and Indigenous communities and educate our McMaster student body by making informative posts, and collaborative posts with members of the McMaster and Indigenous communities, as well as hosting events to raise awareness. 

Inaugural meeting of Global Water Futures held on a First Nation

McMaster hosted what is believed to be the first major science gathering on a First Nation in Canada for the inaugural meeting of Global Water Futures on the Six Nations of the Grand River to discuss critically important issues related to Canada’s freshwater resources. The meeting was an opportunity for hundreds of people from the community and across the country to come together and discuss the latest research, future scenarios, and possible solutions. Regional partnerships are a centrepiece of the work of Global Water Futures researchers, who recognize the importance of involving Indigenous ecological knowledge and leadership in solving water issues.

McMaster research team tackles water issues in First Nations communities

As part of a Global Water Futures project, Co-Creation of Indigenous Water Quality Tools, an interdisciplinary team of McMaster University researchers is working to identify sources of contaminants in drinking water sources and local aquatic ecosystems within two Indigenous communities, the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario and the Lubicon Cree Nation of Little Buffalo in northern Alberta.

‘Microplastics everywhere we look’ – Great Lakes watchdog calls for Canada and U.S. to act 

Scientists advising a cross-border organization that reports on Great Lakes water quality are calling on the U.S. and Canadian governments to designate microplastics a Chemical of Mutual Concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and improve monitoring and risk assessment for them. 

“We find microplastics everywhere we look, from the open waters of the Great Lakes to rivers flowing into the lakes, to fish and aquatic insects that live in these habitats,” says Kidd, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Environment and Health in the department of Biology. 

She and her students have studied microplastics in rivers in southern Ontario since 2019. 

Kidd and many other experts are calling for additional policies to reduce plastic production and consumption, as over half of the plastics in current use go to landfills or become litter and their production from fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. 

She suggests individuals can make a difference through simple measures, such as avoiding single-use plastic products and installing filters on washing machines and dryers to capture plastic fibres released from clothing. 

McMaster researchers work to ensure community water supply is safe

Global Water Futures: Solutions to global water threats

McMaster University is a lead partner in Global Water Futures, a national collaboration of Canadian universities, formed to deliver leading-edge water science to manage water futures in Canada and other cold regions in which global warming is changing landscapes, ecosystems, and the water environment.

Ontario Water Consortium 

OWC’s mission is to enable a thriving community of the most ambitious and innovative partners to advance technologies and science, and the enabling complimentary tools, policy, and knowledge to address the economic, environmental, and social issues which stem from challenges in the urban water cycle. 

McMaster water researchers named to International Joint Commission advisory board

The International Joint Commission (IJC), a 110-year-old initiative between the U.S. and Canada to prevent and resolve disputes around the country’s shared bodies of water, appointed McMaster researchers to its Great Lakes Science Advisory Board in 2019: Karen Kidd, a professor in the Department of Biology and the School of Geography and Earth Sciences, and Gail Krantzberg, a professor with the Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology.

‘Microplastics everywhere we look’ – Great Lakes watchdog calls for Canada and U.S. to act 

Scientists advising a cross-border organization that reports on Great Lakes water quality are calling on the U.S. and Canadian governments to designate microplastics a Chemical of Mutual Concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, and improve monitoring and risk assessment for them.  

“We find microplastics everywhere we look, from the open waters of the Great Lakes to rivers flowing into the lakes, to fish and aquatic insects that live in these habitats,” says Kidd, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Environment and Health in the department of Biology. 

She and her students have studied microplastics in rivers in southern Ontario since 2019. 

 Kidd and many other experts are calling for additional policies to reduce plastic production and consumption, as over half of the plastics in current use go to landfills or become litter and their production from fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. 

 She suggests individuals can make a difference through simple measures, such as avoiding single-use plastic products and installing filters on washing machines and dryers to capture plastic fibres released from clothing. 

Global Centre for Climate Change Impact on Transboundary Waters

The new , led by McMaster’s Gail Krantzberg and the University of Michigan’s Drew Gronewold,  will address complex international water crises, emphasizing collaboration with Indigenous populations. Funded by international organizations including NSERC, SSHRC, NSF, CSIRO, and UKRI, the centre will focus on understanding and mitigating water crises in areas spanning multiple nations. It will address climate change’s impact on water resources through diverse governance and management strategies.

Canada-U.S. collaborations on Great Lakes water research

Gail Krantzberg, a professor in McMaster’s Walter G. Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology, is an expert in Great Lakes science, policy, and governance. She has worked with local and provincial governments for decades on the issues of water security and policy. She collaborates on Canadian-American efforts to restore Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes (including Hamilton Harbour), which have invested US$22.8 billion over the last 35 years, according to an article in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. The money has been well-spent, the article finds, with every dollar toward cleanup catalyzing more than $3 worth of community revitalization.

Collaborative graduate program presents students with challenges of water security

The Water Without Borders graduate program, offered by the Faculty of Social Sciences of McMaster University in collaboration with the United Nations University: International Network on Water, Environment and Health, provides the opportunity for students to tackle major issues such as water security. The program focuses on the international water sector and addresses issues of water without borders, either geopolitical or disciplinary. Access to safe water and sanitation, the economics of water provision, the impact of climate change on water, environment and health, and the development of international policies to ensure water access, environmental sustainability and human health are among the issues that the program addresses. For example, students consider the crisis of one billion people in the world who live without access to safe water, and what international governance structures are necessary to safely steward this vulnerable resource.