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Inter-departmental teamwork produces national-scale watershed framework
When Wayne Gretzky picked Canada's 2002 Olympic gold medal hockey team, he chose players with complementary skills. Had he stocked the team only with scorers or entirely with defensive specialists, Canada would have watched the gold medal go to another nation. Gretzky recognized the value of building the team on the diverse strengths of its members.
With support from GeoConnections, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, and Statistics Canada applied this same strategy to develop a new way to map and analyze the country's rivers, lakes, and drainage basins on-line. This important capability better equips us to understand how we affect our country's valuable freshwater supplies. By integrating these water features with other national data frameworks (integrated geospatial datasets) such as road networks, railways, administrative boundaries, and ecological regions as well as 2001 census data, the national-scale watershed framework offers unique insight into Canada's freshwater resources and our role in sustaining them.
This capability is valuable for a number of stakeholders: policy-makers, university researchers, environmental organizations, industry, the agricultural sector, the media, and the public. By using this insight to address water problems–whether created by pollutants or agriculture residue from farms or some other phenomenon–we can better maintain the quality and supply of an increasingly precious global commodity.
Harnessing diverse strengths
Before the national watershed project started, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, and Statistics Canada had each maintained separate watershed frameworks. These frameworks not only overlapped in certain areas, but also failed to integrate Canada's watersheds with other framework data. That's why the three departments started to talk.
"We each had the same vision–to produce a common 1:1 million-scale national watershed framework and avoid the duplication that had characterized our approaches to that stage," says Doug Trant, chief of the Spatial Analysis Section at Statistics Canada. "In short, we wanted to update the framework and make it consistent throughout the federal government."
Each partner contributed uniquely to the project. Natural Resources Canada brought geomatics mapping expertise, Environment Canada brought knowledge about water–its flow, levels, and quality–and Statistics Canada brought demographic data and integration tools. Each piece proved essential to creating the national-scale watershed framework, now a part of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI).
Natural Resources Canada (The Atlas of Canada) – The mapping specialists
Natural Resources Canada was represented by the Atlas of Canada –the Department's national-scale mapping specialist. With funding from GeoConnections, the Atlas managed the project's mapping work and geomatics technology. For example, it was important to ensure that all the rivers on the digital map connected to the proper tributaries, that major water features were named, and that water flow was shown in the right direction.
"Capturing connectivity and flow in a water network sounds straightforward, but it required several person years of work to verify these attributes for the entire country," says Peter Paul, project leader, Atlas Frameworks. "The Canadian waterways network is extensive and complicated."
Environment Canada (Meteorological Service) – The hydrological experts
Environment Canada collects all kinds of information about water: its flow, levels, supply, and quality. Capitalizing on this expertise, Environment Canada showed where to demark the watershed boundaries, and ensured that the Atlas of Canada properly arranged and delimited the watershed hierarchy. In essence, Environment Canada controlled the quality of the hydrological maps.
"Beforehand, users didn't have an easy way to navigate to watershed data and get maps," says Dave Harvey, planning and project support hydrologist with Environment Canada. "Now, because we've emphasized information access and sharing, they do have a way."
Statistics Canada (Environment Accounts and Statistics) – The human connection
Statistics Canada is interested in examining how humans affect various environmental resources, water among them. Consequently, in addition to helping design the data models, Statistics Canada integrated 2001 census information about population and dwelling counts within Canada's watersheds. This capability allows users to see how many people would be affected by an event specific to a given watershed.
"Usually the human factors are on one map, and the environmental factors on another," says Mr. Trant. "In this case, you can look at both the human side and the environmental side on the same map. It's really a step forward."
New applications abound
With the national-scale watershed framework now in place, new applications are beginning to arise. For instance, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada will be using the national watersheds to report on the environmental affects of agricultural practices. Environment Canada is considering creating a water-quality index not unlike the UV index, and Statistics Canada is now using the watershed framework to develop environment and resource accounts that measure the stock, flow, and value of resources.
"When we started this project, we knew that we wanted a common framework so that we wouldn't duplicate work," says Mr. Paul. "We had no idea that these applications would come out of the woodwork. But because the framework is there, people are starting to use it. That's the exciting part."
| GeoConnections is a national partnership initiative led by Natural Resources Canada to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) and make Canada's geospatial databases, tools, and services readily accessible on-line. |