On the surface, Canada appears rich in freshwater. Yet, as communities across the country continue to face increasing water scarcity, it’s clear that accessible and centralized watershed data is needed to understand and sustainably manage freshwater sources. Living Lakes Canada’s Columbia Basin Water Hub, designed to address this need, is launching a new visualization tool that transforms water data into meaningful visuals, supporting informed decision making and community climate adaptation efforts.

The Water Hub brings together over 400 datasets and seven million data points from over 50 contributors. This extensive water data covers lakes, streams, wetlands, snow, glaciers, and more. Since receiving the Open Data Quality Award from the Canadian Open Data Society in 2023, the Water Hub has continued evolving to meet the expectations of its data contributors.

With support from Living Lakes partner Link Digital, a global leader in CKAN and open data solutions, the Water Hub’s new custom graphing tool offers an interactive and accessible data experience. This new feature enables users to better understand the data they collect, spot preliminary trends, and effectively communicate findings with wider audiences, especially those without a scientific background.

“These graphing upgrades are a real bonus to groups like the Rossland Streamkeepers,” said Bill Coedy, Program Manager with the Rossland stewardship group. “With the ability to layer multiple years of data, it allows us, and anyone interested in our water data, to easily visualize year-over-year trends and gain high-level insights into the changes happening in our watershed.”

Bonanza Creek, Dunbar Creek and Bruce Creek are streamflow monitoring sites within Living Lakes’ Columbia Basin Water Monitoring Framework (CBWMF)–a coordinated network for tracking climate change and other impacts on water supply in southeastern British Columbia. The latest Watershed Bulletin from Living Lakes features three data case studies, showcasing the functionality of the graphing tool for each of these creeks.

“The monitoring that Living Lakes Canada is doing is critically important to understanding the hydrology and water levels in the Columbia Wetlands,” said Dr. Suzanne Bayley, President of Columbia Wetlands Stewardship Partners. “Dunbar Creek is one of the mid-sized creeks that we have very little data on, and we really value the important flow data that Living Lakes is collecting. These creek waters provide crucial habitat for swans and hundreds of breeding birds in the wetlands.”

Regional water hubs like the Columbia Basin Water Hub can play a key role in centralizing and managing water monitoring data through a specialized, holistic approach. By offering broader access, these hubs make water data readily available to researchers, government, students, professionals, and the public. This approach includes adherence to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), the First Nation Principles of OCAP® (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) and CARE Data Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.

As interest in regional databases grows, communities across diverse water monitoring landscapes are increasingly embracing this model for localized water data management and stewardship.

Read the full data summary in the Watershed Bulletin recently published by Living Lakes Canada.

The CBWMF datasets on the Columbia Basin Water Hub will have the graphing tool available by the end of November 2024. Data users and contributors can expect the tool to be enabled on all datasets in early 2025.

For questions regarding the program, please contact cbwaterhub@livinglakescanada.ca.