Keeping an eye on water levels
As climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather events, like this year’s weather-breaking dry spring in parts of the province, policy-makers should be aware of the potential impacts on water security, says researcher Soe Myint.
Researching those potential impacts and the factors currently influencing Canada’s water levels is exactly why the Arizona State University professor is in Saskatchewan.
From September to December, Myint will be working out of the University of Regina as a Fulbright Canada Research Chair in water, environmental and clean energy studies.
Together with other researchers at the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaboration and the university’s department of geography and environmental studies, Myint will be looking at 15 years of data (from 2002 to 2017) on a multitude of factors to see what impact they have on Canada’s water levels.
These factors include environmental degradation, deforestation and urban and agriculture expansion.
From his research, Myint said, he hopes to flag areas across the country, particularly in the western provinces, where both ground and surface water levels are trending downward and then figure out why.
With this information, policy-makers will be better equipped to make decisions on water conservation in the future.
“We will know what issues we should pay more attention to in the future for the formulation of rules and regulation for the long-run water management issues (and) water conservation … they can make evidence-based decisions,” Myint said.
If water levels in specific areas or provinces show a steady rate of decline, Myint said policy-makers could look at options such as regulating water use or introducing crops that require less water.
With an estimated 1.7 billion cubic metres of water used each year for agricultural irrigation in Canada, Myint said falling water levels are no small concern.
“Water becomes a serious issue ... because climate change and drought is exponentially getting higher, this could basically affect Canada’s food security and agriculture system,” he said.
“If it is declining, then decision-makers or policy-makers will have ... to make their decision if water conservation needs to be done in these areas.”
Keeping the country’s agriculture sector strong is in the best interests of not only Canada but of the rest of the world because Canada’s exports play a large role in global food security, Myint said.
While Myint said he does not expect any provinces to need these types of measures right now, he said that noting the water-level trends — and the factors responsible for them — could also help policy-makers take preventive steps to keep the problem from getting worse.
“We need to show how these things change over time, in which year it is changing, why it is changing,” he said.