canada1water-phase-2-newsletter-issue-3-spring-2026

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In this issue...

C1W goes global, nested models shine, GRACE insights deepen, and more.

Modelling for the real world

It’s been a busy winter and spring for the Canada1Water (C1W) team, with ongoing advancements to the framework itself, new data delivery channels in place, a spate of publications either in print or on the way, and multiple presentations at the annual IAH-CNC meeting. Maybe most exciting for us have been all the ways the C1W framework has been put to practical use: serving as the foundation for knowledge exchange with Ethiopia, enabling clickable online 2D hydrogeological assessments, generating multiple permafrost models for the Carcajou River basin, and a provincial-scale integrated groundwater–surface water–climate modelling framework for Nova Scotia, to name a few. There’s lots more to come with what’s planned for summer and fall. We’re already excited to share those further stories in our fall update. Stay tuned!

Hazen Russell, Geological Survey of Canada

Melissa Bunn, Geological Survey of Canada

Steve Frey, Aquanty

Canada1Water Project Co-leads

Project News

Taking C1W to the world

Ethiopia is known as “the water tower of Africa” because it is home to the headwaters of several major transboundary rivers, yet today the country has limited means to quantify freshwater availability. When water scientists there learned about C1W, they reached out to learn more — aiming to create their own Ethiopia1Water framework.

Working through NRCan’s Technical Assistance Program (TAP) — funded by Global Affairs Canada — the C1W team designed and delivered a training and knowledge exchange project in cooperation with Ethiopia’s Wollo University and Ministry of Water and Energy. To date, two 30-hour training courses have been completed, the first focusing on datasets to support integrated groundwater–surface water modelling and the second on how to use the HydroGeoSphere™ modelling engine.

After each course, select members of the Ethiopian cohort came to Canada for further training. In June 2026, Ethiopian water scientists Asmare Belay Nigussie and Anteneh Yayeh Adamu gave a presentation on the project to the European Geoscience Union together with Hazen Russell of the GSC. This fall, C1W team members will travel to Ethiopia to conclude the knowledge exchange and further cement hydrological modelling ties between our two countries. The modelling framework developed for Ethiopia will have broader applicability to other sub-Saharan countries as well.

One-click hydrogeological assessments

The C1W team has been building a framework for 2D hydrogeological modelling for Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to support the measurement of restoration project impacts on freshwater resources. With funding from the Natural Climate Solutions Fund and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), C1W is using its standardized national modelling framework to provide clickable 2D hydrogeological assessments based on C1W data.

AAFC research scientist Dr. David Lapen—a core C1W scientific contributor—is using C1W’s 2D simulations to assess pesticide-related water contamination risks along with 3D baseflow estimates to help conserve benthic taxa. David is also using combined 2D and 3D simulations to determine the sensitivity of land use change on water related ecosystem services in collaboration with Aquanty, the Canadian Wildlife Service at ECCC and Natural Resources Canada.

“The holistic C1W data and modelling outputs can provide next-generation predictive analytics that support a vast array of water pollution risk indicators and agri-environmental metrics necessary for gauging sustainability and resiliency in the agricultural sector,” David says, adding they can do so from field scale to national scale.

One hundred sites across Canada are currently being modelled for the 2D hydrogeological framework. That will scale eventually to roughly 1,000, and work is underway to extend the one-click applications to water quality endpoints, including those focused on nutrients and plant protection products. The C1W methodology has the portability and scalability to provide those assessments wherever they are needed.

An immersive approach to water literacy

C1W team members were on hand at Canadian Geographic’s Ottawa headquarters in March 2026 for the launch of the Water Literacy Project, a collaborative venture that aims to provide hands-on learning resources about water for Canadian classrooms — including a -sized floor map of the country that students can use to explore Canada’s water resources from coast to coast to coast. C1W provided the C1W-NHN (National Hydro Network) dataset with classifications that is the framework for the map.

NRCan is proud to support the Water Literacy Project alongside ECCC, the Canada Water Agency and the Fondation de Gaspé Beaubien. The principal partners in the Water Literacy Project are Aqua Action, Canadian Geographic and the Canadian Museum of Nature. You can learn more about the Water Literacy Project at https://thewaterliteracyproject.org.

Steven Frey cited in ENVI final report

June saw the release of the long-awaited final report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, known colloquially as ENVI. Aquanty’s Steven Frey presented to the committee and is cited several times in the report, advocating for an integrated freshwater management approach that considers surface water and groundwater and their interactions. The report, Sustaining Canada’s Freshwater for Today and Tomorrow includes four recommendations specific to groundwater — bringing a long-overlooked yet vital aspect of the water cycle into the resource management conversation. The full report is available for download here.

Milestones

The power of nested models

The C1W team has gathered all the data and tools to quickly build nested regional models using the C1W framework. This has been demonstrated multiple times with respect to the Carcajou watershed in the Northwest Territories. The team has run a nested model to generate five different conceptual models of permafrost and developed a nested model of the Spiritwood buried valley geological model within the C1W framework. The baseline Carcajou model was published in Data in Brief in April 2026. Research lead Melissa Bunn is now working on water risk maps for mining using the C1W framework and aims to integrate future climate risk as well. In May 2026, she presented the Carcajou models and runs at IAH-CGU Halifax. Aquanty’s Steven Frey has also presented a nested model of Nova Scotia

Refining GRACE

In 2025, C1W research lead John Crowley and his colleagues streamlined GRACE processing to enable routine monthly updates and set up a national data portal (www.cacs.nrcan.gc.ca) with gravity-based satellite data solutions for 70 Canadian watersheds, significantly improving data access and sharing. New team member Soran Parang led some preliminary work to integrate Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observations into the GRACE analysis to support a self-consistent water gravity-deformation (SWaG-D) model. This allows vertical deformations to be separated from hydrological mass changes, improving water storage estimates. Moving forward, the team will expand GNSS integration across Canada to refine both hydrological signals and the national vertical deformation model.

C1W data finds a new home

C1W data is now being delivered through the CERN-funded Zenodo repository in the European Union, which provides DOIs for all hosted data. Zenodo is free to use and able to handle large datasets. With C1W data also still hosted on the C1W portal (https://portal.canada1water.ca), researchers, policymakers, industry decision makers and other users now have more places to find the data they need.

Taking the stage at IAH-CNC-CGU

C1W presenters had a strong presence at this year’s annual IAH-CNC meeting, which was held at the end of May in Halifax in partnership with the Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU). In addition to presenting Carcajou nested model data (see above), Melissa Bunn also took part in a session on groundwater education and communication and presented on water cycle monitoring. Aquanty’s Steven Frey presented the Nova Scotia model along with planned future applications, while John Crowley drew on recent GRACE achievements to give a well-attended plenary talk on Integrating Satellite Gravimetry and Hydrological Modeling to Monitor Water Storage Changes Across Canada.

Publications

The C1W team has been busy publishing papers on various aspects of their work, including:

PRESENTED

Adamu, A. Y., Nigussie, A. B., Frey, S. K., Ejigu, A. A., and Russell, H. A. J.: Groundwater–Surface Water Interactions in Ethiopia: A Review of Knowledge Gaps, Emerging Opportunities, and the Role of Integrated HydroGeoSphere Modeling under Climate Change, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21954, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21954, 2026.

Bunn, M.I., Khader, O., Kessel, E.D., Frey, S.K., Russell, H.A.J., 2026a. Another dimension of uncertainty: Representing Permafrost in Regional Scale Modelling, in: Advancing Knowledge in Earth and Environmental Science. Presented at the Joint CGU and IAH-CNC Annual Meeting 2026, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Bunn, M.I., Russell, H.A.J., Frey, S.K., Logan, C.E., Clark, J., 2026b. Building Understanding Layer by Layer: Visualizing and Communicating Groundwater Systems, in: Advancing Knowledge in Earth and Environmental Science. Presented at the Joint CGU and IAH-CNC Annual Meeting 2026, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Crow, H.L., Larmagnat, S.N., Pehme, P.E., Parker, B.L., Russell, H.A.J., 2026a. Porosity insights from NMR logging and Med-CT core scanning, in: Hydrogeophysics Workshop Morwick G360 Groundwater Research Institute, UGuelph. G360 University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada.

Crow, H.L., Pehme, P., Wright, S., Novakowski, K., Russsell, H.A.J., 2026b. Preliminary Evaluation of a Borehole Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Logging Tool in Precambrian Basement Rock., in: Burt, A.K., Colgrove, L.M., Ford, D., Holysh, S.E., Kalmo, K.J.J., Rivard, C., Strynatka, S.A. (Eds.), Ontario Groundwater Geoscience 2026 Open House. Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 6423, 56p., p. 56.

Crowley, J.W., Bunn, M.I., Frey, S.K., Russell, H.A.J., Huang, J., Khadar, O., 2026. Integrating Satellite Gravimetry and Hydrological Modeling to Monitor Water Storage Changes Across Canada, in: Advancing Knowledge in Earth and Environmental Science. Presented at the Joint CGU and IAH-CNC Annual Meeting 2026, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Frey, S.K., Kessel, E.D., Russell, H.A.J., Bunn, M.I., Erler, A.R., Kurylyk, B.L., 2026. Development of a Nova Scotia-scale fully-integrated groundwater – surface water model for climate change impact analysis, in: Advancing Knowledge in Earth and Environmental Science. Presented at the Joint CGU and IAH-CNC Annual Meeting 2026, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Russell, H.A.J., Frey, S.K., Wang, S., Crowley, J.W., Bunn, M.I., 2026. Canada and national groundwater level monitoring: Taking stock from an international and provincial context, in: Boisvert, E., Burt, A.K., Colgrove, L.M., Ford, D., S E Holysh, Kalmo, K.J.J., Rivard, C., Strynatka, S.A. (Eds.), Ontario Groundwater Geoscience 2026 Open House. Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 6423, 56p., p. 56.

Russell, H.A.J., Boisvert, E., Burgess, D., Bunn, M.I., Champagne, C., Crowley, J., Garrick, D., Kessel, E., Lapen, D., Murdryk, L., Ryan, C., Spence, C., and Wang, S. 2026. Crises in Canada’s water monitoring, fragmentation and isolation: A need for a water cycle approach; CGU-IAH-CNC annual meeting Halifax, NS. 2026-05-24—27.

Russell, H. A. J., Frey, S. K., Preston, S., Lapen, D., and Kessel, E.: Characterizing groundwater and surface water contribution to ecosystem services: A Canadian national-scale framework, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15853, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15853, 2026.

PUBLISHED

Bunn, M.I., Khader, O., Kessel, E., Frey, S.K., Erler, A.R., Russell, H.A., 2026. Data to support the modelling of integrated groundwater-surface water flow in permafrost regions, using the Carcajou Watershed, Northwest Territories, Canada. Data in Brief. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2026.112802

Kessel, E.D., Frey, S.K., Lapen, D.R., Geng, X., Russell, H.A.J., 2026a. Canada1Water: Hydraulic parametrized integrated soil, bedrock and peatlands datasets. Data in Brief 112636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2026.112636

Kessel, E.D., Frey, S.K., Russell, H.A.J., 2026b. Canada1Water Digital Terrain Model with Bathymetry dataset. Data in Brief 112878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2026.112878

Soltani, M., Fletcher, C.G., Erler, A., Bunn, M.I., Russell, H.A.J., 2026. Assessment of snow water equivalent characteristics in time and space over the Mackenzie River basin. Canadian Water Resources Journal / Revue canadienne des ressources hydriques 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2026.2616002

SUBMITTED/IN REVIEW

Crowley, J. W., Frey, S. K., Huang, J., Bunn, M., Russell, H., Véronneau, M., Khader, O., Erler, A. R., Argus, D. F., Bringeland, S., & Fotopoulis, G. (under review). Bridging satellite gravimetry and hydrological modeling: A study of land water storage anomalies in southern Ontario and the Great Lakes Basin. Water Resources Research.

Mahdinia, Mani, Erler, A.R., Ng, Ka Hei, Huo, Yiling, and Peltier, W. Richard, "The Impact of Lakes in North American Regional Climate Simulations", Journal of Climate.

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