WC134 JanFeb 2024 - Magazine - Page 31
date, studies show global groundwater supplies are shrinking.
“One-third of the world’s large aquifers are depleted beyond
rejuvenation... [while] pollution of groundwater generally
decreases its value and limits its use,”1 according to Warren W.
Wood and John A. Cherry.
This matters even for communities that rely on surface water
sources because roughly half of all surface water comes from
groundwater base flows.
The data dilemma
Until now, the essential data needed for well-informed decisions about freshwater resources has been unavailable, siloed,
or collected inconsistently by provincial, territorial, and federal
agencies, and often limited to surface water only. Integrating
and standardizing the varied datasets across watersheds and
jurisdictional boundaries has prevented a clear understanding
of regional groundwater systems.
According to the authors of Changes in Freshwater Availability Across Canada, “The complexity of groundwater systems
and a lack of information make it difficult to assess whether
groundwater levels have changed since records began.”2
Canada1Water, a public–private research and development
project co-led by Waterloo’s Aquanty Inc. and the Geological
Survey of Canada, aims to help overcome these issues by providing a first-of-its-kind, continental-scale hydrologic model
showing detailed climate, groundwater, and surface water interactions up to the mid and late 21st century. The finished model
will provide the first integrated multi-decadal view of changes
to Canada’s water resources.
“With Canada1Water, we’re not just looking at one component: we’re representing the whole of the cycle,” says Steve Frey,
project co-lead and director of research at Aquanty. “That’s
going to allow us to break down climate change risks related to
water resources on a watershed scale.”
Unprecedented integration
The three-year Canada1Water project is modelling the water
cycle for continental Canada and Baffin Island as well as
transboundary watersheds shared with the U.S., incorporating multiple pre-existing models and datasets that have been
customized and enhanced for accuracy and consistency. Its outputs will include surface water flow rates, soil moisture levels,
groundwater levels, and exchanges between surface water and
groundwater under projected climate conditions. All datasets
and outputs will be publicly available, free of charge.
The insights provided by Canada1Water will give
field researchers a more complete, big-picture
understanding of conditions to inform their
findings at any given well or drill site.
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