Join Eric Kessel, Steve Frey and Brayden McNeill at the 76th Annual Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA) National Conference (“Rising With the Tide“) in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Eric and Steve will both be giving presentations about our ongoing Canada1Water project, and Brayden will be available at our booth to discuss Aquanty’s ongoing projects and give product demonstrations. Stop by to say hello!
Click here to register for the conference.
Canada1Water overview: A national-scale hydroclimatological modelling initiative for climate change impact analysis
Authors: Steve Frey, Hazen Russel, Andre Erler, David Lapen
When: 10:35am, Wednesday June 21st, 2023
Where: Harbour B
Assessing the impact of climate change on Canada’s water resources requires a national solution that considers both groundwater (GW) and surface water (SW). The Canada1Water (C1W) initiative addresses this need through the use of HydroGeoSphere (HGS) fully-integrated GW-SW models that collectively provide complete coverage for drainage basins over continental Canada and Baffin Island. In addition to HGS, C1W is utilizing regional climate modelling conducted with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF 4.3) model and land surface modelling conducted with the Community Land Model (CLM 5) to generate future climate projection ensembles and thermal regimes for the GW-SW models. Spatial resolution among models varies, with HGS resolving Strahler order 4+ rivers in a 3-D unstructured mesh with <1 to 5 km edge lengths, while WRF and CLM are running on 12.5 km and 5 km regular grids, respectively. For computational efficiency, and to accommodate distinct regional differences in physiography and hydrological characteristics, the continental-scale area of interest has been divided into seven HGS model domains that align with 7 major drainage regions; with areas ranging from 800,000 to 2.3 million km2. Each of the HGS models contains between six and eight subsurface layers that incorporate spatially varying hydraulic properties reflective of mineral and organic soils, and surficial and bedrock hydrostratigraphy. Results from C1W will help quantify changes in surface and subsurface hydrologic conditions at mid- and end-century time frames under an ensemble of climate projections. C1W model data sets and model outputs will be published under an Open Government Data licence.
Canada1Water data framework: Harmonized national-scale hydrographic, soils, and hydrogeologic information to support groundwater and surface water analysis
Authors: Eric Kessel, Steven Frey, Amanda Taylor, Omar Khader, David Lapen, Xiaoyuan Geng, Hazen Russell
When: 2:30-4:00pm, Mon & Tues (June 21st & 22nd), 2023
Where: Poster Session, Commonwealth B
Canada1Water (C1W) fully-coupled groundwater – surface water models require input data that describes surface and subsurface physical and hydraulic conditions within domains that comprise continental Canada and Baffin Island. Furthermore, the data needs to be harmonized such that it’s format, spatial resolution, and metadata is consistent. Because little of the requisite model input data previously existed at the continental scale, extensive work has gone into assembling, stitching together and normalizing datasets that typically conform to political boundaries, and/or specific regions within the C1W domain. Examples of C1W datasets include: (i) a blended and hole filled DEM available with and without stitched bathymetry for over 7500 lakes, (ii) a corrected and stream-ordered version of the NHN vector dataset, (iii) a gridded soils data set that includes classification and hydraulic properties for mineral and organic soils, (iv) physical and hydraulic characterization of surficial and bedrock hydrostratigraphy, and (v) a gridded top-of-bedrock topography. The C1W models are of relatively coarse scale, with Strahler order 4+ river representation; however, the underlying model construction datasets incorporate much finer spatial resolution and have potential uses that extend beyond large scale – regional analysis. As part of the C1W initiative, all of the harmonized model input data will be made publicly available through outlets such as the Geological Survey of Canada’s Open File system. It is the intention that the C1W datasets will help support future hydrologic modelling and analysis within Canada by simplifying the data assembly process.