A New Portal Sets an Example by Promoting Better Water Management

By Sonia Trentin
July 2010

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The increasing popularity of reusable bags and practices such composting reflects our growing concern with protecting the health of the planet and its precious resources. Perhaps the single most elemental of these resources is water, which is essential for our basic needs and for many other wider uses, such as agriculture, transportation and the generation of electricity.

The more we know about our local sources of water, the better we’ll be able to protect and use them. That’s why the Conseil de gouvernance de l’eau des bassins versants de la rivière Saint‑François (COGESAF) in Quebec — in collaboration with Natural Resources Canada’s (NRCan’s) Centre for Topographic Information – Sherbrooke (CTI-S) — has launched a Web portal that centralizes information on major water management issues in the Saint-François River watershed, a 10,000-km2 area that includes Sherbrooke, Drummondville and other communities in eastern Quebec.

Watershed-based water management takes account of the many different interactions between water resources, plant and animal life, land use and human activities. A watershed is not simply the isolated rivers that run through an area, but rather the entire geographical area that is drained by rivers, streams, associated tributaries and melting snow and ice.

Stepping up to the plate in Sherbrooke

An initiative was launched in Sherbrooke to protect the critical resource of the Saint‑François River watershed. In 2002, representatives of the newly created COGESAF set out to develop a comprehensive, integrated management approach for all resources, particularly water, and all activities within the watershed area.

To this end, the committee members worked on a new project to develop a portal providing access to different sources and sets of information for the water resources of the Saint-François River watershed. Intended to be a site where information and action converge, the portal was unveiled in 2009 after several years of development. The project as a whole is based on the needs of watershed users, and it presents the various geo-referenced layers needed for integrated watershed-based water management in an interactive mapping environment. An initiative of this kind is a unifying project, in that it allows diverse groups — municipal officials, agricultural producers, foresters, researchers, entrepreneurs and the general public — to obtain an accurate and up-to-date picture of their watershed.

Constructive collaboration

As a partner in the project, NRCan’s CTI-S provided data, human resources and expertise to actively contribute to the development of this new, interactive mapping tool. The collaboration between CTI-S and COGESAF, which began with the use of the GeoBase National Hydro Network (NHN), helped guide COGESAF in its aim to democratize access to information, notes Catherine Frizzle, a biologist with COGESAF. The NHN is one of the main datasets integrated into the portal.

Collaboration between NRCan and COGESAF has facilitated the management of watersheds and the species that live in them by providing accurate, reliable, up-to-date information. The new portal is fully functional and accessible. Designed to be constantly evolving, it will continue to expand in order to provide the public as well as water resource stakeholders and other specialists with the best possible data. And with this data, everyone will now be able to play a direct role in managing the different ways in which water shapes our world and our lives.

For more information, visit the COGESAF (French site only) or the GeoBase Web sites.