Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and Aquanty Inc. recently announced initiation of the Canada 1 Water project to address the long-term sustainability of Canada’s water resources.
“The Canada 1 Water project will, for the first time, develop a continental-scale, groundwater-surface water modelling platform integrated with climate and land use change information to inform understanding and decisions on the sustainability of Canada’s water resources” said Ed Sudicky, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and founder of Aquanty Inc.
Canada 1 Water will construct state-of-the-art integrated surface/subsurface models based on Aquanty’s HydroGeoSphere platform, with simulated climate change scenarios for all six of Canada’s major drainage regions, encompassing almost ten million square kilometers. Steve Frey, who received his PhD (2011) in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences under the supervision of Professor David Rudolph, will lead Aquanty’s work. The platform will include decision support tools to inform on droughts, floods, carbon sequestration, wildfire risk, permafrost changes, ecosystem services, and surface/groundwater quantity providing an integrated means to assess commodity (i.e., forestry, agriculture, mining) responses and risk associated with projected climate and land use induced changes. Importantly, the Canada 1 Water project will address surface water and groundwater resource issues such as cumulative effects, impacts of permafrost loss and flooding, key issues for Indigenous communities across Canada.
The Canada 1 Water project is an initiative of NRCan’s Groundwater Geoscience Program and Aquanty Inc. together with Agriculture and Agrifood Canada and the universities of Waterloo and Toronto.
Project updates are available at: canada1water.ca/