Living Lakes Canada is receiving $1 million from the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, which is delivered by the Real Estate Foundation of BC and Watersheds BC, with financial support from the Province of British Columbia as part of its $10-billion COVID-19 response.
The funding will go to development of a collaboration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in the Columbia Basin to determine water monitoring priorities, and to train 25 people to conduct water monitoring and water-related restoration work. The data will help build climate resilience throughout the region, where melting glaciers, drier weather and diminished stream flows are signs that climate change is affecting water resources.
“Living Lakes is pleased to continue our work on building a greener economy through the work of water monitoring and stewardship in the Columbia Basin,” said LLC Executive Director Kat Hartwig. “It is necessary that we work to support local, provincial and First Nations governments in their quest to build water-related adaptation strategies in our communities. Water is the underpinning of local economies and is essential to the well-being of our communities and the healthy water-based ecosystems that we all depend on.”
LLC will train people to professionally monitor and collect data for regional water data-deficit areas. To house all the water-related data (past, current and future) collected in the Canadian Columbia Basin, LLC has developed the Columbia Basin Water Hub, an open source database that officially launched this month. LLC is also facilitating the development of a Water Monitoring Framework based on a water-balance approach to help build a Priory Monitoring Matrix for the region’s 10 sub-watersheds.
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