Making the Invisible Visible

Through Global Water Futures, groundwater expert David Rudolph and his colleagues are working with partners in northern communities to protect groundwater and build resilience to a changing climate.
 

We can’t see it, but the water that runs under our feet – also known as groundwater – is a critical resource. Groundwater feeds our ecological systems, from wetlands to rivers and lakes. It provides drinking water for communities of all sizes, it helps farmers irrigate their crops, and it keeps streams running during cold winters.

In fact, groundwater makes up 30% of the world’s freshwater. “Because it flows below the ground surface, however, it’s a largely ‘invisible’ resource,” says David Rudolph, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo. “While groundwater performs many important functions that contribute to our lives, the average person might not know its value.”

A geological engineer by training, Rudolph studies groundwater management at the university. In recent years, his team has focused on innovative ways to monitor these water resources in cold region environments and in the face of changing land use and climate.

“We want to help make the invisible visible,” he says.

Photo: David Rudolph, Professor, Faculty of Science, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Understanding groundwater systems in Canada’s North

As part of the Global Water Futures program, Rudolph and his team of researchers and students are working together with northern communities, government, and industry to measure and better understand groundwater systems in the North.

With funding from GWF and the Northwest Territories Environmental Studies Research Fund, Rudolph’s team is helping private industry and government gather the data they need to understand the potential impact of any future natural resources activity in the region, including contamination of water supplies and threats to local ecosystems.

They’re also working with northern communities to understand the impact of climate change on groundwater resources. As river flooding becomes more frequent and as permafrost thaws, these communities have noticed significant changes in the environment, Rudolph explains.

“People are seeing changes in fish health and animal migration. They notice the increasing risk of wildfires, and risks to the reliability of winter and ice roads. They’re also facing threats to their drinking water supplies – for example, when the river floods, it can contaminate the groundwater that charges their wells,” he says. “These communities want to know when to prepare for change and how to make their systems more resilient. These changes – and how they affect their relationship to groundwater – have a huge impact on their lives.”

New tools and approaches for a different climate

Due to the cold, remote terrain, measuring and monitoring groundwater flow systems in northern climates requires innovative thinking. “The same tools we use here in Waterloo won’t work up north,” Rudolph says. “We’ve had to come up with new methodologies and technologies.”

Working with Global Water Futures colleagues, Rudolph and his team have started to use a combination of advanced technologies, such as satellites, airborne geophysics, and infrared imagery, as well more traditional solutions, including local monitoring of groundwater and surface waters with portable methods.

Collaboration with local Indigenous communities is also critical for the success of these projects, he says, sharing that traditional knowledge plays a significant role in not only directing his team’s research, but also making significant contributions to finding the answers.

“Building trust with our partners is by far the most important aspect of our work,” he says. “When we were presenting to our community partners in Norman Wells and Tulita in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories, one of the elders shared that if we wanted to find the springs where groundwater comes to the surface, we should follow the animals.”

Animals living in freshwater ecosystems need sources of salt, the elder explained. “This was an invaluable insight – we never would have thought of it,” Rudolph says. “With this knowledge, we were able to use aerial photographs to track pathways that the animals were following. We found the springs.”

In parallel with these projects, several of Rudolph’s students are involved in a youth-focused field training program with northern communities to support ongoing groundwater monitoring work locally. “Youth want to protect the traditional way of life and make contributions to their communities,” he says. “They understand that knowledge is power – it helps us make decisions about how to protect our resources.”

Protecting the future

Participating in Global Water Futures and working with Indigenous communities has helped Rudolph expand his thinking about groundwater. “I have a better understanding of the reasons groundwater is important to people living in the remote north, and the program connected me with different experts to find innovative ways to measure and describe the system.”

With Global Water Futures, he adds, the team had the flexibility to change direction, move faster with more resources, and pay attention to the questions that are most urgent for their collaborators.

“The climate is rapidly changing in the north,” Rudolph says. “With our research, we’ve just scratched the surface, but the strength of a program like Global Water Futures is that we’ve been able to demonstrate the critical importance of understanding that change. The work will continue, and, through the program, I now have a robust network of colleagues to support the next stages.”