Editing Home - Global Water Futures Observatories

Section 1: Proxy Content

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Abstract

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Global Water Futures Observatories (GWFO) is Canada's premier national university-operated scientific freshwater observation network. With funding support, in part, through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and its Major Sciences Initiative (MSI), GWFO operates 64 instrumented river basins, lakes, streams, and wetlands, 15 deployable measurement systems, and 18 state-of-the-art water laboratories. These monitor Canada's drainage basins and aquatic systems in fine detail at local scales across a vast portion of Canada, spanning many of the provinces and territories, and major river basins including the Yukon, Mackenzie, Saskatchewan–Nelson, and Great Lakes–St. Lawrence.

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GWFO’s vision is to serve as a national water observatory consisting of a network of instrumented water observing sites, supported by deployable observing systems and major laboratories, that provides open access water data and the necessary infrastructure to collect supplementary data, which informs the development and testing of water prediction models, monitors changes in water sources, underpins diagnosis of risks to water security and helps design solutions for water sustainability.

GWFO provides open access to its meteorological, glaciological, hydrological, water quality and freshwater data, which contributes to the development and evaluation of water prediction models, monitors changes in water sources, supports the identification of water security risks, and aids in designing strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of Canadian water resources.

Led by the University of Saskatchewan and eight other universities (Waterloo, McMaster, Laurier, Windsor, Toronto, Trent, Western, Carleton), GWFO collaborates with Indigenous communities, governments, industry and agriculture to support water services and management. It supports transformative water research that improves agricultural water management, water supply forecasts, river and lake health monitoring and develops advanced capabilities to predict water futures for Canada in a time of rapid global warming and development.