Summary of the 2022 International Institute for Sustainable Development Canadian Prairie Water Retention Monitoring and Modelling Workshop
-
There is an agreed-upon need for continued and more comprehensive monitoring efforts for water retention in the Canadian Prairies.
-
There are still plenty of opportunities to optimize the ways in which we engineer, manage, and quantify the primary and co-benefits of water retention systems simultaneously.
-
Technologies like spectral sensors are being used to advance the state of the art in water retention monitoring and modelling.
On June 23, 2022, The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) hosted a full-day virtual workshop on monitoring and modelling for water retention projects across the Canadian Prairies. The meeting was designed to be a place to share, receive feedback, and determine collaboration opportunities with respect to existing, ongoing, or proposed water retention projects. Participants from government and non-governmental organizations, academia, and industry were all invited to participate. In total, the workshop provided nine different presentations for 20 attendees and ended with a discussion session to identify opportunities and next steps in the areas of advancing water retention science and business case development. Presentations ranged from foundational historical research, like for those water retention structures monitored as part of the Watershed Evaluation of Beneficial Management Practices (WEBs) program, to how technologies like spectral sensors are being used to advance the state of the art in water retention monitoring and modelling today. This document summarizes those talks and key takeaways from the workshop's final discussion session.
Participating experts
You might also be interested in
An Application of the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) Methodology to Pelly's Lake and Stephenfield Reservoir, Manitoba, Canada
This report provides a valuation of the ecosystem services in Stephenfield Reservoir and Pelly's Lake in Manitoba, Canada.
Adaptive Monitoring on the Winnipeg River
IISD and Aquatic Life® have partnered in a pilot project of adaptive monitoring in the Winnipeg River basin, to deploy high-frequency sensors that deliver data in near real-time.
Geography Matters: Targeting "hotspots" for cumulative environmental benefits
Using open data from a variety of sources, we demonstrated how Manitoba can target its limited resources to deliver public programming to agricultural regions and gain better outcomes.
Freshwater connectivity can transport environmental DNA through the landscape
A new study conducted at IISD-ELA found that the movement of water between freshwater bodies can transport eDNA which complicates the question of how accurately it can be used to monitor species.