Yesterday I had an editorial post up at Science Borealis, Canada’s science blog aggregator. It was one of those posts that you write at the last minute because you’ve missed the reminder from your online calendar, and you realize you have a responsibility – as the Editorial Manager – to set a good example and not miss your scheduled post date!
Luckily I was writing on a topic that’s been at the forefront of my mind lately: water. How much we have, how we manage it, and what we know about it. I ended up writing about the western drought in the context of WWF-Canada’s new online watershed tool, highlighting their conclusion that a lack of water data across the country makes water-related decision making quite difficult.
“Western Canada has been experiencing unprecedented warm and dry conditions this year, leading to drought conditions across the region. This has resulted in farming woes, increases in both the number of wildfires and the area burned by those fires (see plot below), water restrictions across western municipalities, and negative impacts on fisheries and hydropower generation.
So it was timely that WWF-Canada released their new Watershed Reports online tool last week. Focused initially on 12 watersheds around the country, with 13 more to be completed by 2017, the application allows users to learn about the state of their local watershed with just a few clicks.”
Read the rest here.

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