Lake Futures

PI: Nandita Basu, University of Waterloo

Project Manager: Laura Klein

The Problem: Canada possesses a huge number of lakes, both large and small, that play a crucial role in water supply, food production, resource extraction, hydropower generation, transportation, recreation, biodiversity, and climate regulation. But despite such water wealth, climate change, agricultural intensification, shoreline development and urbanization, and exerting mounting pressures on the health and ecosystem services of lakes and their associated social and economic benefits.

The Plan: The project will focus on the causes, impacts and mitigation of great-lake issues by creating and applying models, determining indicators, and measuring vulnerability, resilience, and recover of the lake ecosystem.

The Outcome: The long-term goal of this project is to deliver risk management solutions that will enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of Canada’s large lake basins under changing climate and land use, and a specific focus on water quality and associated impacts. Because of the many environmental stressors affecting lake ecosystems originating in the surrounding watersheds, long-term management strategies and governance models must embrace the lake basin in its entirety.