Today's the day! The '3Ms' of groundwater hold forth.
Jay Famiglietti, David Zetland and I (among others) will be panelists at today's groundwater event at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, Underground Intelligence: The need to map, monitor, and manage Canada’s groundwater resources in an era of drought and climate change.
Here are the agenda and participants' biographies:
Download POWI-UndergroundIntelligence-Agenda-June25
Download POWI-Groundwater-Biographies-FINAL-June25
Tune into the webcast at 8:30 AM EDT by clicking here or visiting the conference home page.
And here is Ed Struzik's paper, which the panel will be discussing:
Download POWI-Underground_Intelligence-Struzik-June25
Struzik starts:
Some 98 per cent of the world's unfrozen freshwater is underground. This groundwater is a vitally important resource, one that sustains industry, agriculture, communities, ecosystems and even ski hills such as Nakiska in the Canadian Rockies which has to make snow from groundwater because not enough snow falls in the area. Life, particularly in rural areas, would be difficult, if not impossible without groundwater. "And yet, like comedian Rodney Dangerfield, groundwater gets no respect," says Michael Campana, renowned Oregon State University hydrogeologist who has been on a blogging/tweeting/ public speaking crusade to promote a better understanding of the importance and vulnerability of groundwater. "It is virtually ignored at the annual World Water Week conference in Stockholm even though I apprised one of the organizers - a former student - of that oversight in 2005."
Note: Some 'renowned' hydrogeologist - even one of my former students ignored me
But as you can see, the film trucks showed up. Here is my personal mobile dressing room.
Struzik continues:
Here in Canada, we have as much, or more groundwater as there is water in all of our lakes and rivers combined. Groundwater supplies 82 per cent of the rural population, 43 per cent of our agricultural needs and 14 per cent of our industrial needs. Fully a third of Canadians rely on groundwater for domestic purposes. Very few of these users, however, pay for the groundwater even though it accounts for a good portion of the estimated $7.8 to $22.9 billion that water contributes to the Canadian economy each year. Those who do pay are charged some of the lowest rates in the world.
Despite its economic, social, ecological and cultural importance, we know relatively little about the amount of groundwater we have in Canada, how it behaves, how rapidly it is recharged (replenished), the quality of the groundwater, and how its quality and quantity has changed over time. These concerns have been raised by many experts. In recent years, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia, Ontario's Environment Commissioner, the Council of Canadian Academies, the C.D. Howe Institute, the West Coast Environmental Law Centre and the Rosenberg International Forum have all weighed in on the subject.
Groundwater lies below the surface of the earth in aquifers ␣ water-bearing deposits of rock, sand or gravel. Although the boundaries of some of these aquifers have been mapped on a two-dimensional (areal) level, the nature, extent, sustainability and vulnerability of most aquifers across Canada are unknown or poorly understood. This is in part because there is no national groundwater mapping strategy, in part because it is expensive and time consuming, and in part because the use of three dimensional mapping and other geophysical tools that are needed to establish volumes, recharge rates and chemistry are still being developed. Monitoring the quality and quantity of groundwater is patchy and generally poor in Canada, in contrast to what is done in the United States, for example. As with mapping, monitoring is expensive to carry out over time.
This lack of mapping and monitoring of aquifers is a significant issue because Canada's reliance on groundwater is almost certain to increase as demands rise, as the climate warms and when the next extended drought strikes parts, or all of the country, as one did in 1999-2004. No water can mean no economically viable crops. No water might also mean no oil and gas production. And poor quality water puts farmers, communities, individuals, and ecosystems at risk.
Mapping, assessing and monitoring Canada's major aquifers in greater detail, thereforeare more imperative now than ever before if we are avoid water crises in the future. As noted by Alfonso Rivera, Canada's chief hydrogeologist at Natural Resources Canada (NRCan),"If we don't understand groundwater, there is no practical way of managing it." Rivera also points out that if we don't understand groundwater, we won't be able to defend ourselves if the United States claims at some point that we are overpumping or abusing aquifers that cross international boundaries.
The challenge is finding ways of mapping, modeling and monitoring groundwater that are visible, sustainable, and self-financing - no easy task considering how politicians are loathe to further tax or burden industry, agriculture, municipalities and taxpayers. But as we describe in this paper, there are technologies for making groundwater visible and options for internalizing costs. We need to embrace these tools. If we do not, if we continue to treat groundwater, like Rodney Dangerfield, with a lack of respect, we do so at our peril.
This conference will be informative and enjoyable.
At the very end of his paper, Struzik concludes by repeating his admonition from his introduction - and he's spot-on:
"To get answers and to avoid what is happening now in many parts of the United States, we need to expedite the mapping of aquifers in Canada. We need to assess and monitor them. We need a national groundwater monitoring network. If we continue to ignore groundwater, we do so at our peril." - Ed Struzik, from the paper, p. 69
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