International Watersheds Initiative
A project designed to help improve the data needed to properly share water between Canada and the United States in the St. Mary and Milk River basins has completed its first step, paving the way for field work over the next year.
Knowing how high the waters have been in the past is important when looking at waterfront development. A pair of markers denoting the highest recorded levels of Osoyoos Lake aim to make people aware of the past when planning for the future.
The Members of the DHTF can be seen on the Confluence Wiki Website.
The roles of the DHTF include data, oversight, communications, and facilitating stewardship.
Realising the challenges of inconsistent data, and the potential advantages gained by a better alignment of geospatial hydrographic datasets along the international border, the IJC convened the Transboundary Hydrographic Data Harmonization Task Force (DHTF) in 2008.
A digital geospatial hydrographic dataset contains information about an area’s surface water, including its rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds, glaciers, dams, coastlines, and watershed boundaries.
Fish in the Red River-Lake Winnipeg system don’t carry passports, even though they move between Canada and the United States. And they can benefit from the river system being relatively unimpeded by dams and other barriers as they migrate and spawn.