By Mari-Louise Rowley

Saskatchewan has always been known for its extreme weather and highly variable water supplies. Lately, however, the extremes have become more severe and less predictable.
In 2007, the spring snow melt set records in east central Saskatchewan, while a drought developed in the southwest. August was one of the coldest and wettest on record in parts of the province. Flooding destroyed homes and communities and ruined crops—if the intense heat in July hadn’t already burnt them.
University of Saskatchewan hydrologist John Pomeroy is trying to decipher why this is happening and how we can best cope with the effect of climate change on water resources.
“Saskatchewan agriculture is set up for extremes already, as every farmer has had to deal with drought or floods at various times,” says Pomeroy. “Our interest in climate change is in understanding how it causes these extreme variations in water supply and weather.”
The Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change and director of the U of S Centre for Hydrology says his team’s work will help cities, farmers and industry plan and prepare for the effect of extreme weather on water resources.

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by Lynn Martel, Rocky Mountain Outlook

There’s water in them thar hills, and scientists are diligently working and thinking up new ways to measure, estimate and predict just how water is stored in mountain landscape.
More than 60 scientists, along with consultants and representatives of utility and power companies, non-profit organizations and provincial and federal governments, gathered at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Centre last week to share information and ideas about how to determine how much water is stored in Canada’s cold weather regions. They were participants at a workshop hosted by the Canmore-based Western Watersheds Climate Research Collaborative titled IP3: Prediction of Water Resources in Mountain and Northern Canada.

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Kimberely Janzen and Erin Shaw (both MSc students) are the co-recipients of this year’s Fred Heal Graduate Award from the College of Engineering, for their research on water resources in the Saskatchewan River Basin! Congratulations to you both!

Robert Armstrong, PhD student in the Centre for Hydrology and Department of Geography won the ESRI Canada Student Scholarship Award in November 2007 to assist in his research using GIS to calculate spatial variability of evaporation over prairie landscapes. The award includes a cash prize as well as a wide range of complimentary software. Congratulations Robert!

This important document details a vision for how the federal govenment might restore Canada’s capacity to understand, measure, predict and sustainably manage our precious freshwater resources. It provides a history of Canada’s recent capabilities in respect of water, emerging threats to water and the needed national capacity to meet new challenges and opportunities that water presents.

John Pomeroy
Read more here!

Dr. Kevin Shook Appointed SGI Canada Research Fellow and DRI Research Scientist.

Dr. Kevin Shook, PhD, P.Eng. has been appointed the SGI Canada Research Fellow and will form the core of the SGI Canada Hydrometeorology Programme at the Centre for Hydrology. Dr. Shook will also contribute to the Drought Research Initiative (DRI) in respect to hydrological aspects of droughts and drought modelling. Dr. Shook is a graduate of the Division of Hydrology and Department of Agricultural and Bioresource Engineering at U of S and comes back to Saskatoon from a senior flood forecasting and hydrological modelling post with Alberta Environment in Edmonton. Dr. Shook’s research has included snowmelt modelling, fractal analysis of hydrological phenomena, flood modelling and extreme events analysis. His new research will focus on prairie hydrometeorology including drought, rainfall, flooding, and water supply under recent, current and future climates and on prairie hydrological modelling.
Welcome back to Saskatoon Kevin!

On Friday June 15th 2007 at 1:30 pm in the Agriculture Building foyer, an announcement ceremony was held in honor of SGI CANADA’s commitment to the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan – a donation which will enable greater understanding of prairie precipitation patterns in the face of climate change. The Honourable Lorne Calvert, Premier of Saskatchewan, Mr. Jon Shubert, President and CEO of SGI Canada, Dr. Peter MacKinnon Q.C., President, University of Saskatchewan, and Ms. Heather Magotiaux, Vice President University Advancement, University of Saskatchewan announed the SGI Canada Hydrometeorology Programme and SGI Canada Research Fellowship in Hydrometeorology at this ceremony. Further details on the SGI Canada Hydrometeorology Programme can be found under Research on the Centre for Hydrology website.

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At the Joint Congress of the Canadian Geophysical Union, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, American Meteorological Society and Eastern Snow Conference, Gro Lilbaek of the Centre for Hydrology won the Campbell Scientific Award which was awarded by the ESC Research Committee to the paper demonstrating innovative technical expertise in data collection resulting in a superior oral or poster paper. Gro’s paper was titled ‘Meltwater Ion Enrichment Caused by Basal Ice Formation’ and was presented as an oral paper. Congratulations Gro for excellence in research!

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Kimberely Janzen, MSc student at Centre for Hydrology, is the recipient of this year’s Fred Heal Graduate Award for the Saskatchewan River Basin, from the College of Engineering.
Congratulations Kim on your efforts!