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 - 27 of 27.
Year
2017
Project Description
High water levels throughout the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River system in 2017 impacted several shoreline communities, stakeholders and businesses. This project consists of analyzing aerial imagery data collected in 2016 by NOAA, 2012 and 2017 by the Army Corps of Engineers, 2017 by Transport...
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
Lake Superior regulation affects levels and flows in the lower St. Marys River. Unnatural changes in outflow can occur at the beginning of each month and the Board of Control has been working on methods to quantify impacts associated with regulation to better accommodate environmental objectives.
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
2017
Project Description
A basin-wide study using 10-25 years of data from 37 sites is being performed to develop an up-to-date water quality trend analysis for a variety of contaminants, such as nutrients, sulfate and chloride. This analysis uses the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) software QWTrend to effectively estimate...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
In light of a planned 3-year long gate refurbishment project at the Fort Frances dam on the Rainy River, an existing 2-D hydrodynamic model will be updated with recent measured water level data in order to simulate the conveyance losses due to gate closures during refurbishment. In addition to this...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The purpose of this project is to develop a new historical record of monthly runoff, over-lake evaporation, over-lake precipitation, and connecting channel flows for each of the Great Lakes using a novel statistical model that (through an explicit acknowledgment of bias and uncertainty) reconciles...
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
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
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 overall objective of this project is to develop a new, authoritative, coordinated numerical model that efficiently and accurately simulates water levels and connecting channel flows in the Great Lakes system given user-specified net basin supply scenarios. The new regulation and routing model...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
This project is the fifth and final phase of the two-dimensional hydrodynamic model to simulate hypothetical flood mitigation scenarios on the lower Pembina River Floodplains. The latest modelling efforts on hypothetical flooding in the Pembina Basin explores the potential relief of floods through...
Bundle name
IWI Project
Year
2015
Project Description
The environmental performance indicators (PI) for the Lower St. Lawrence River (IERM2D) are a critical component of the evaluation of water level regulation plans for the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River system and are important to maintain in an adaptive management perspective. These PIs have been...
Bundle name
IWI Project