Tuesday, June 19
11:40 a.m. - 1 p.m.
AC223 (AA112 for overflow)
The event will be live streamed. Watch online!
The freshwater environment is facing unprecedented pressures in Canada and globally. Unsustainable use of surface and groundwater is widespread, nutrient pollution is a global threat, and there are increasing concerns for emerging contaminants, including endocrine disruptors. Extreme events such as flood and drought have severe local consequences, but social and economic effects can be global and risks to life and infrastructure are increasing with increasing development in vulnerable areas. Current pressures are set in the context of rapid environmental change, and will likely increase in the face of socioeconomic development and population growth. In the face of these critical societal challenges, what can the water science community contribute? Clearly there is an increasing need for deep understanding of aquatic and terrestrial environments and their interactions with the climate system, and further, analysis of their vulnerabilities to environmental and societal change. But for science to provide information relevant to societal challenges, there is also a need for effective engagement with users to ensure that research is salient, credible, and usable. And in the face of the evident non-stationarity of the earth system, new approaches to the management of risk are required. There are however, unique opportunities to harness new sensor technologies and platforms, and the power of Big Data, to inform new science, support improved modeling and forecasting systems, and provide new ways to engage users and the public. This plenary reports on Canada’s Global Water Futures program, a $143million federal/university partnership, which integrates expertise from 18 universities and 8 Federal agencies. Designed with diverse user communities to meet their needs, GWF aims to build on the opportunities offered in an era of Big Data to provide the science, models and decision support tools needed to address the challenges of Canada and other rapidly changing cold regions.
HOWARD WHEATER is Canada Excellence Research Chair in Water Security, founding director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, and distinguished research fellow and emeritus professor of hydrology at Imperial College London. A leading expert in hydrological science and modeling, he has published more than 200 refereed articles and 6 books. He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the American Geophysical Union and winner of the IAHS-UNESCO-WMO International Hydrology Prize and the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water. He has initiated and led national and international research programmes in the UK and Canada, and has advised states, provinces, and national governments on flood, water resource, and water quality issues. He represented Hungary and Argentina at the International Court of Justice, and recently sat on an International Court of Arbitration concerning the Indus Waters Treaty. He was, until 2014, vice-chair of the World Climate Research Programme’s Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchange (GEWEX) project and leads UNESCO’s GWADI arid zone water program. In Canada, he led the Changing Cold Regions Network, focused on the analysis and prediction of hydrological change in western Canada, and initiated the Global Water Futures Program, focused on managing water futures in Canada and other cold regions where global warming is changing landscapes, ecosystems, and the water environment. His role as chair of the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Sustainable Management of Water in the Agricultural Landscapes of Canada saw the release of a report in February 2013 titled Water and Agriculture in Canada: Towards Sustainable Management of Water Resources. Most recently, he was appointed as a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Future Water Resource Needs for the Nation: Water Science and Research at the U.S. Geological Survey.dianne-saxe
