WISKI for Hydrologic Assessment Michael Seneka Water Policy Branch Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development

Or, What do hydrologists do all day?

What do we do all day? Hydrologists focus on interpreting today’s surface water quantity information, based on the context that is provided by historical data –How much water is there in a river, lake or watershed? Yearly, seasonally, monthly, weekly… Long-term average, variability, extremes, ranges, how often? –How does water availability change as you move from place to place (mountains-foothills-plains; geography, climate) –Is today’s water level (or streamflow) average, normal, low, high, extreme? –What is the 1 in 10, 1 in 50 and 1 in 100 year flood? –How do I estimate water supply, when there is no local data?

Alberta Desktop Method Recommendation for Environmental Flows Ecosystem Baseflow: Weekly Q80 (20 th percentile)

What data are we most interested in? We look at the near real-time data to answer specific questions… But streamflow, water level and climate data becomes most valuable after years, ideally years, and longer Near real-time data is rarely used for long-term characterization; only final quality controlled/published data is typically used When recorded data is collecting regulated (affected by dams; large water removals or returns), we use models to take out the human impacts so we know what would have been natural

Speaking of modelling…

Click to edit Master title style First Level –Second level Third level –Fourth level »Fifth level

Click to edit Master title style First Level –Second level Third level –Fourth level »Fifth level Smoky River BC/AB Border

WISKI Toolbox

A word about missing data

Missing data is a four-letter word Few things can be more aggravating, or “fun and challenging” –Data gaps –Seasonal gaps (pesky winter!) –Discontinued stations, or short records –Never enough monitoring points for all the places we manage But we are super creative! If you ask us we will gladly come up with something reasonable (and possibly a disclaimer) –Drainage area ratios, data regressions, simple to complex models

Hydrometric stations “Suitable” for routine hydrologic analysis Snapshot of water licences issued

Translate Peavine Creek (540 km² at gauge) to proposed project on Clousten Creek (300 km² at the diversion point)

Filled by lagging and pro-rating the Athabasca River at Athabasca data (upstream station) plus the Clearwater River at Draper data (tributary to Athabasca) Filled by lagging and pro-rating the Athabasca River at Athabasca data (upstream station) plus the Clearwater River at Draper data (tributary to Athabasca)

WISKI Development Priorities for Hydrologist Community Completing data migration of important external hydrometric and meteorological time series data sets –Calculated Morton evaporation and evapotranspiration –Modelled naturalized flows (includes voidfilled recorded and modelled natural) Evaluating the advanced system tools and functionality –Statistics, trend, frequency analysis, regression –Understanding Transformations, including nested transformations

WISKI Development Priorities for Hydrologist Community Duplicating our existing reports and computational tools, primarily housed in Excel spreadsheets and powered by VB macros –Basic compilation/summary of sliced-diced flow statistics, e.g. year- day matrix; Regression tools, e.g. voidfilling annual flood peaks –General instream flow objectives and water conservation objectives –Environmental flow computation (Alberta Desktop Method) Having the flexibility to create and manage custom time series to hold products of analysis, regression, and modelling

Thank You!