International Watersheds Initiative Projects
The International Joint Commission’s boards in watersheds along the US-Canada border carry out International Watersheds Initiative (IWI) projects to promote communication, conduct scientific studies and contribute to the resolution of watershed issues. Projects are developed by a board and reviewed by Commission staff. All projects are consistent with the board’s mandate and meet the objectives of the IWI. Learn more about the International Watersheds Initiative.
Displaying 1 - 43 of 43.
Year
2022
Project Description
Several different entities and governments, including the IJC, are responsible for the management of, and setting regulations, permits and other requirements for the waterbodies within the St. Croix River watershed. This means that for many water users, managing water conditions to meet various...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2022
Project Description
The cumulative impacts of past, present, and potential mining in the transboundary Lake of the Woods Rainy River basin has been a concern and an understudied topic for many years. The purpose of this project is to conduct an 18-month study to develop a shared, accessible, bi-national understanding...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2022
Project Description
Ongoing water management efforts that mitigate extreme flows to reduce flooding impacts on infrastructure throughout the Red River watershed have led to concerns about fish passage over existing dams as well as through or around current and pending water diversion projects. Many of these species are...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2022
Project Description
This project will continue the development of a long-term stable isotope monitoring network for the St. Mary and Milk River basins that supports source water separation and identification. A coupled isotope-hydrologic model of the basins will be applied to simulate isotopic separations and source...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2022
Project Description
This project is a 3-year study to better understand stressors affecting water quality in the St. Croix River watershed including nutrient concentrations and their distribution. It will also inform enhanced water quality monitoring in the basin. Overall, the project will help to: (1) rank stress in...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2021
Project Description
Fish counting at Milltown Dam has been in place since 1981 and is a method of establishing an approximate count of the anadromous fish entering the St. Croix River at the lowermost dam located in St. Stephen, NB and operated by NB Power Milltown Hydro Power Generating Station (Milltown Dam). This...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2020
Project Description
As climate change influences the conditions in the Osoyoos Lake Basin, it is important for the International Osoyoos Lake Board of Control to better understand how hydrologic conditions resulting from future climate scenarios interact with the current lake-level rule curve and drought criteria...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2020
Project Description
The project would be a 4-year study to better understand stressors affecting water quality within the St. Croix River, and to undertake enhanced water quality monitoring in the river with a particular focus on understanding nutrient concentrations and distribution in the watershed.
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2019
Project Description
The Rainy-Lake of the Woods Basin is a popular tourist destination close to several large water systems meaning there is ample passageway for aquatic invasive species (AIS) to enter. When this project was proposed, there was a lack of consistent AIS prevention efforts across jurisdictions, which...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2019
Project Description
There is currently no streamlined on-line system for the pubic or internal users to view all data collected within the St. Croix River Watershed. The USGS and Environment Canada both collect data within the watershed, however, their separate viewing systems are not identical or linked in any way...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2019
Project Description
The primary goal of this project is to develop a historical database representing annual or sub-annual evapotranspiration (ET) totals in the Milk and St. Mary River basins from 1982-2018 using remote sensing. This database will lay the foundation for the establishment of a remote sensing tool to...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2019
Project Description
This project is a continuation of ongoing GLAM efforts to collect data to support model validation and will result in detailed vegetation community data referenced to elevation and seasonal water levels in 16 Lake Ontario coastal wetlands. The current year of this project is focused on resurveying...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2018
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2018
Project Description
Anadromous fish have been counted at the research trap at the Milltown dam fishway since 1981. This project forms the basis for measuring the progress of current international efforts to restore sea-run alewife, blueback herring, and American shad to the St. Croix River watershed. It also plays an...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2018
Project Description
This IWI project investigated how variations in river flow affect dissolved oxygen levels, which are important to determining biological conditions in a river. The project covered a 5-year period from 2019 to 2023. The project work consisted of installing and maintaining continuous water-quality...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2018
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2018
Project Description
This is a continuation of ongoing GLAM efforts to collect data to support model validation. This project will result in detailed vegetation community data referenced to elevation and seasonal water levels in 16 Lake Ontario coastal wetlands (i.e., the same 16 wetlands that were surveyed in 2017)...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Binational Water Quality Modeling Using SPARROW – Development of Models for Transboundary Watersheds
Year
2017
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
The East Grand Lake Basin in eastern Maine and southwestern New Brunswick drains an area of 132 mi2. The impoundment provides storage for hydropower operations and the maintenance of minimum streamflows on Forest City Stream for environmental compliance. Estimates of unregulated hydrology for the...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
The Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) is an operational near real-time gridded precipitation product from Environment Canada available since April 2011 for North America. CaPA has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the Great Lakes area, due to its unique capability of capturing some of the...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
Estimates of consumptive use and evaporative losses are an important component of the computation of the natural flow of the Milk River and apportionment of Milk River water between the U.S. and Canada.
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
This project is a continuation of ongoing GLAM efforts to collect data to support model validation and will result in detailed vegetation community data referenced to elevation and seasonal water levels in 16 Lake Ontario coastal wetlands. The collected data will augment existing datasets from...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2017
Project Description
The board intends to incorporate recently developed alewife population models into a user friendly, plain language tool depicting the theoretical outcomes of: i) changes in fish passage and ii) commercial harvest to alewife runs in the St. Croix River. The end-product will be a graphic web-based...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2016
Project Description
Common reed (Phragmites australis) is an exotic invasive plant that has colonized extensive portions of Great Lakes coastal wetlands and shorelines and is less prominent in Lake Ontario – with some speculation this may be related to water-level regulation. This study will provide insights into the...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2016
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2016
Project Description
Anadromous fish have been counted at the research trap at the Milltown dam fishway since 1981. This project forms the basis for measuring the progress of current international efforts to restore sea-run alewife, blueback herring, and American shad to the St. Croix River watershed. It also plays an...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2016
Project Description
In line with the final goal established in 2015 of generating a 30-year, 15-km, daily hindcast of precipitation, evaporation and runoff for all Canada/U.S. transboundary watersheds, this project focuses on the production of a 5-year hindcast of the Canadian Precipitation Analysis system (CaPA), the...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2016
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The wetlands meadow marsh performance indicator has been a critical component of the evaluation of water level regulation plan options for the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River system and it is important to validate and improve the modelling approach. This project aims to produce a modelling tool that...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
Flow measurements at the Compensating Works at the head of the St. Marys Rapids will be conducted throughout the summer and fall of 2015 in order to establish and verify relationships used to determine flow through the St. Marys Rapids at multiple partially open gate settings. The International Lake...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
StreamStats, developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), is a Web-based Geographic Information System (GIS). It provides users with access to an assortment of analytical tools useful for water-resources planning and management, along with engineering applications. StreamStats makes the process...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) is an operational near real-time gridded precipitation product from Environment Canada available since April 2011 for North America. CaPA has generated a lot of enthusiasm in the Great Lakes area, due to its unique capability of capturing some of the...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
SPARROW (SPAtially Referenced Regression On Watershed attributes) is a watershed model that relates patterns in water quality to human activities and natural processes. Using existing monitoring data, SPARROW analyses the water quality of streams, rivers, and lakes in relation to the location and...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
This project aims to acquire high-resolution aerial imagery in maximum-vegetation condition for sixteen Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River coastal wetlands, use GIS to map the vegetation types within these wetlands, and then assess similarities and differences in wetland extent from equivalent...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
This project will result in detailed vegetation community information referenced to elevation in 16 Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River coastal wetlands on the US side. The proposed work complements planned work in Ontario wetlands and will allow the development of a lakewide, binational assessment...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
This project will result in detailed vegetation community aerial coverage and taxonomic data referenced to elevation and seasonal water levels in 8 Lake Ontario coastal wetlands. These data can be used for adaptive management monitoring and integrate into wetland vegetation community modelling in...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The United States and Canada independently developed their own suite of hydrographic datasets using different standards and approaches. Containing mapped rivers, lakes, and watershed boundaries, these national datasets stopped at the international border and often did not line up, leaving an area of...
Bundle name
IWI Project