Urban Water Cycle Observatory
In the near future, 2/3 of the world population will live in urban areas. The local pressure of these environments on the water resource is constantly increasing, while knowledge on the local water cycle and the interactions between the different water reservoirs is lacking. This project is therefore part of one of the most important development challenges of the 21st century: ensuring the sustainability of water resources by adapting (adjusting practices and developments) the urban hydrological cycle to changes in climate, land use and water needs.
Living within the Earth’s carrying capacity is one of 16 emerging global challenges for the future that has been identified as part of the Imagining Canada’s Future initiative. These complex issues were identified through an extensive foresight exercise and represent the key challenges that Canada is likely to face in a changing global environment over the coming decades. All of these challenges cut across multiple sectors and research disciplines and require broad collaboration to address.
The establishment of an Observatory of the urban water cycle aims to federate research in urban hydrology, to allow significant advances in the understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of key processes of the urban water cycle, through observation, in situ analysis, quantification of water reservoirs and their dynamics. A close collaboration with developing cities on the outskirts of Montreal is developed on this project.
The specific objectives are:
- To set up a natural reference frame allowing an original coupling of physical and geochemical approaches for the quantification of water flows
- To develop new original instrumental and theoretical skills for the physical, geochemical and isotopic prospection of the different components of the water cycle.