Agriculture Canada highlights C1W - Researchers protect environment, human and animal health with natural capital
“Every year in the South Nation watershed for example, Steve [Frey of Aquanty Inc] and his ECO2 team estimated that groundwater from an ecosystem services perspective was valued at over $300 million in benefits to humans and ecosystems – just from a 4,000 sq km basin. That value is greater than $400 million during drought years. We should be valuing groundwater a little more and protecting it.”
Click here to read the AAFC Article
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have spotlighted the Canada1Water project in their latest "Scientific achievements in agriculture" feature article, and the ways that the C1W project continues to benefit (and benefit from) the "Environmental Change One Health Observatory" (ECO2) initiative at AAFC.
“Dr. Hazen Russell is a researcher with the Geological Survey of Canada at Natural Resources Canada. He and Dr. Steve Frey of Aquanty Inc. in Ontario have been leading on the next generation of predictive tools to show how climate and landscape changes are affecting ecosystem services related to water resources in the ground and on the surface. One goal is to help farmers and other stewards of the land respond to threats like drought and effects of excessive precipitation before they happen.
"In many areas, groundwater is the most accessible source of water for agricultural irrigation or livestock," Hazen says. By fine-tuning a model developed for, and used by the South Nation Conservation Authority to manage watershed resources, their modeling work is already helping producers and watershed managers better understand how water resources are being stressed and how to proactively manage them. And that is just one part of it. The team has taken big steps towards predicting not only water resource dynamics, but forecasting pathogens and agrochemical levels in these watersheds in real-time.
Their work at the South Nation Watershed also formed the basis for another project known as Canada1Water (C1W). Also led by Hazen and Steve, C1W is one of the largest and most comprehensive hydroclimate-based decision support systems developed to date, for all of Canada.
"ECO2 and C1W are linked from a practical perspective of wanting to understand the role of groundwater within an agricultural watershed," says Hazen. It’s helped researchers better understand the ecosystem services provided by groundwater, like supporting crops, purifying water, cycling nutrients and mitigating the effects of floods and drought on crops.”