Pan-Canadian Boreal Observation Network (BON)
Boreal Water Futures is actively conducting field research in these locations. Zoom in and out with the "+" and "-" icons or, alternatively, hover your mouse over the map and use ctrl + scroll.
Industry and governments alike are concerned about the future of water in Canada's boreal.
- How will climate and extreme weather change over the next century and how will it affect hydrological vulnerability?
- What forest management, wetland management, and soil management practices can be adopted to enhance hydrological and societal resilience as a means to reduce hydroclimatic risk exposure?
- How will changing boreal hydrology affect the maintenance and design of natural resource infrastructure, future mine closure plans and community source-water protection plans?
To address these questions and more, BWF is:
- Working to develop improved pan-boreal future climate change, extreme weather, and fire regimes predictions through collaboration with the core GWF future climate outputs and with a key stakeholder and user - the Canadian Forest Service,
- Leveraging existing infrastructure and partner in-kind support to establish an evidence-based pan-Canadian Boreal Observation Network of boreal forests and wetlands to assess boreal water services vulnerability, and
- Collaborating with NGO and industry users to integrate hydrological modelling and a social-ecological systems (SES) approach to assess water futures risk at the wildland-society interface (mine management and communities).
To facilitate this three-step approach, BWF has organized our research expertise within three research themes, each with their own sub-themes.
Theme A: Future Climate Change, Extreme Weather and Fire Regimes
Over the last century and-a-half, the mean annual temperature in the boreal region of Canada has risen by 0.5 to 3.0°C, with increases greater than 2.0°C west of the Manitoba-Ontario border. Increases of an additional 2°C in mean annual temperature by 2050 are highly probable, and mean annual temperatures across the Canadian boreal zone could be 4 to 5°C warmer by 2100.
While precipitation is expected to increase across Canada's boreal zone, it may not be sufficient to offset the increased drying caused by warmer temperatures. These warmer temperatures, coupled with changes in the distribution and timing of annual precipitation, are likely to lead to significant vegetation community shifts in all ecosystems and an increase in the frequency of large wildfires, which can cause serious economic losses.
While precipitation is expected to increase across Canada's boreal zone, it may not be sufficient to offset the increased drying caused by warmer temperatures. These warmer temperatures, coupled with changes in the distribution and timing of annual precipitation, are likely to lead to significant vegetation community shifts in all ecosystems and an increase in the frequency of large wildfires, which can cause serious economic losses.
A1: Climate Change and Extreme Weather
- We will work closely with the EXTREME project team and the Core Modelling Team in order to enhance future climate and extreme weather preparedness for our users and stakeholder needs related to water resources and wildfire risk.
- We will provide our users and stakeholders more robust estimates of precipitation and temperature change across regions.
- We will explore how analysis of regional changes in climatic conditions can be linked to existing stakeholder reporting systems (such as the Fire Weather Index (FWI)) for incorporation into our Water Futures Risk Assessment framework with historical FWI and ECCC data as a means of simple tool for users to reduce uncertainty in future climate and extreme weather.
A2: Wildfire Regimes
- Collaborating with our Canadian Forest Service collaborators and using the results from the EXTREME project team for high-resolution future weather we will generate pan-boreal Fire Weather Index (FWI) System indices for the rest of this century.
- We will integrate FWI models with fire growth models (e.g. Prometheus, BurnP3) to improve prediction in the area burned and potential impacts on ecosystem structure (vegetation type, age distribution) and function (evapotranspiration); an essential input for boreal ecohydrology vulnerability.
- We will then integrate both of these models with the Peatland Smouldering Ignition model to reduce uncertainties of organic soil smouldering risks.
Theme B: Boreal Ecohydrology Vulnerability
The use of well conceived conceptual models of how water is stored and moves through the landscape must be the foundational basis for a risk assessment of the vulnerability of boreal water futures. With this in mind we will leverage existing infrastructure and partner in-kind support to establish an evidence-based pan-Canadian Boreal Observation Network (BON) of boreal watersheds that cover Canada's boreal ecozones (see map above), and includes both upland forests and wetland hydrological units (HUs), hydrogeological settings (HGs), soil types (mineral, shallow organic, deep organic), a range of forest stand types and climate zones, and includes both natural and disturbed (harvested, burned, mined, etc.) systems. Each location within our network consists of several instrumented watersheds with historical hydrological, meteorological, and remote sensing data from as recent as a few years to several decades.
B1: Forest Hydrology and Vegetation Change
- We will utilize BON eddy covariance flux tower sites to compare water, energy and carbon cycling of forested HUs across ecozones and disturbances to assess ecohydrological resilience and vegetation controls on evapotranspiration and soil water storage.
- Using remote sensing and permanent plots of post-disturbance vegetation recovery rates we will quantify ecohydrological interactions that will influence overall productivity, and by extension water use efficiency, over large spatial extents by examining differences in ecosystem photosynthetic properties.
- Examine the historical response of foliage greenness to drought using Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GIMMS NDVI VI3g) products of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) from 1986-2008.
- Synthesizing spatial data with canopy height model and field hydrological and vegetation observations we will begin analyses on interactions of productivity with groundwater flow and water table patterns relative to disturbance features.
B2: Wetland Ecohydrological Feedbacks
- Analyze eddy covariance (EC) data at all BON wetland sites to assess ecohydrological resilience and vegetation controls on evapotranspiration and soil water storage.
- Develop new parameterizations of a peatland hydrological impacts model (PHI) with the potential to link this within CRHM and other core GWF models.
- The model will be utilized to examine key feedbacks in the regulation of water loss and moss productivity under a range of hydrological conditions to examine peatland stability scenario assessments.
B3: Changing Boreal Soils
- Together with the Canadian Forest Service, we will initiate the first pan-boreal comprehensive study to assess the vulnerability of boreal soils to altered soil hydrological properties in response to expected soil drying and wildfire.
Theme C: Water Future Risk Assessment
The objective of this theme (and overall objective of this proposal) is to develop a water futures risk assessment framework (WFRA) for boreal users and stakeholders in order to create a more resilient wildland-society-water nexus in Canada's boreal landscape. As requested by users and stakeholders we will target two critical areas important to the Canadian boreal economy: i) mine water management and ii) wildland-urban interface wildfire. We plan to utilize two different WFRA approaches for these two applications with the aim to integrate them to create a more resilient wildland-society-water nexus. Our mine water management WFRA adopts a numerical modelling approach while our wildland-urban interface WFRA adopts an SES approach.
C1: Mine Water Management
- We will develop an improved water futures risk assessment to estimate future water balances and to aid in water management and landscape closure planning.
- We propose to develop, test and adapt existing state-of-the-art HU-based hydrology models (e.g. CRHM, PHI) by integrating them with our future climate change and extreme weather analyses, our HU ecohydrology vulnerability analyses and numerical land-surface models.
- Evaluate the effect of mine dewatering on the peatlands over the life of the mine and the potential changes in vegetation and wildfire regime and the conditions affecting reclamation once pumps are shut off.
C2: Wildland-Society Interfaces SES
- Leverage a Social-Ecological Systems (SES) lens to facilitate collaboration among sectors with the aim of enhancing end user communities' disaster response capabilities and adaptive capacities.
