WATERLOO, ONT., May 31, 2021 – Aquanty Inc. is very excited to be a part of the recently announced Canada 1 Water (C1W) project. C1W is a new initiative by Natural Resources Canada to create a continental-scale groundwater–surface-water modelling platform integrated with climate and land use change information to provide decision support for risk-based assessments.
State-of-the-art models will be constructed, with simulated climate change scenarios for all six of Canada’s major drainage regions, encompassing almost 10 million square kilometres.
“Canada 1 Water represents a truly 21st-century advancement in integrated climate-surface-groundwater modelling capabilities to assess water resource vulnerabilities across the Canadian landscape,” explained Dr. Edward Sudicky, “not only within Canada, but it lays out a science-based roadmap for scientific communities and government agencies around the globe.”
A fully integrated surface/groundwater model for all of Canada (Canada Continental Scale Model – CCSM) was initiated in 2009 using HydroGeoSphere (HGS). The first version of the CCSM was completed in 2020 (read more here). It demonstrated large-scale ground/surface water interactions and water balances, including regions in Canada’s far north; where hydrologic monitoring data is extremely sparse, and yet where climate change impacts are anticipated to be most severe.
The Canada 1 Water model will build upon lessons learned from the CCSM and integrate it with a state-of-the-art model framework with advanced climate projection data to produce a Canadian continental-scale assessment of projected climate change impacts to groundwater resources.
In addition to using the existing Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) climate projection analysis developed by the University of Toronto, additional dynamically downscaled climate modeling will be conducted with the WRF model to expand the ensemble of possible future climate conditions as well as to take advantage of recent advancements in the understanding of global and regional climate dynamics.
For the first time, Canada will have a comprehensive physically-based platform to model the integrated climate–groundwater–surface water system. This platform will include decision support tools to inform on droughts, floods, carbon sequestration, wildfire risk, permafrost changes, ecosystem services, and surface/groundwater quantity.
The project will address the longstanding challenge, identified by the Canadian Council of Academies, of understanding the sustainability of Canadian water resources. The decision support framework within the platform will provide an integrated means to assess commodity (i.e., forestry, agriculture, mining) responses and risk associated with projected climate and land use induced changes. C1W will help address surface-water and groundwater resource issues associated with Indigenous concerns, such as cumulative effects, impacts of permafrost loss, and flooding.
For more information about Canada 1 Water please visit canada1water.ca.
About Aquanty
Aquanty Inc. is a local water resources science and technology firm specializing in predictive analytics, simulation and forecasting, research services, and IoT. The company is a research spin-off company from the University of Waterloo and was founded in 2012 by the key developers of HydroGeoSphere (HGS), the modeling platform which will provide the basis for the C1W initiative.
