Investigation of Long-Term Climate and Streamflow Patterns in Ontario

To develop mitigation and adaptation strategies for undesired consequences of climate change, it is important to understand the changing hydrological and climatological trends in the past few decades. Although the changing climate is a cause of concern for the entire planet, its effects can vary significantly on a regional scale. Canada has experienced a rapid rise in the annual mean surface air temperature in the past decades. The current study aims to investigate trends in monthly mean precipitation, rainfall, snowfall, maximum and minimum temperature, as well as baseflow, surface runoff, and total streamflow values for the province of Ontario, Canada. To the best of the author’s knowledge, a similar study involving rural and urban watersheds, that quantifies the impact of changing climate on temperature and other hydrological processes over a period ranging from 1968 to 2017, has not yet been conducted for Ontario. Man-Kendall trend test was used to analyze trends in the above mentioned climatic and hydrometric parameters for rural and urban watersheds situated in the northern and southern parts of Ontario. The results of this study indicate that the mean monthly minimum temperatures for rural watersheds situated in southern Ontario have increased significantly for the winter and summer months, which may have caused an increase in snowmelt and consequently the streamflow for the winter months in the region. Unlike the watersheds in southern Ontario, the northern watersheds witnessed relatively fewer instances of significant changes in mean monthly temperatures, and in some cases, declining rates have been noted. Similarly, only a few watersheds in the north saw a substantial drop in baseflow over the summer months. For nearly all the months, the average monthly minimum and maximum temperatures were found to increase for urban watersheds. The streamflow, baseflow, and surface runoff increased, likely due to rapid urbanization, resulting in a lower infiltration rate. These results will contribute towards the decision-making processes and development of alternate water management policies within the province, taking into account the regional variations in climate change’s impact on the hydrology of Ontario’s watersheds.

Evaporation Retardation by Monomolecular Layers: An Experimental Study at the Aji Reservoir (India)

It is an established fact that huge quantities of water are lost from lakes, reservoirs and soils by evaporation. This assumes greater significance in arid and semi-arid regions around the globe when a general scarcity of water is compounded by high evaporation loss from the open water surfaces of lakes and reservoirs. The use of surface covering by a monomolecular film to reduce evaporation loss from large open water surfaces offers the greatest promise among all currently available techniques. This is the only system that retains the water surface in a state that does not interfere with other uses of the body of water such as boating, navigation recreation, fish, and wildlife propagation. Various experiments and field trials worldwide have proven conclusively that the fatty alcohols and their emulsions effectively retard water evaporation and result in saving to the tune of about 20% to 50%. An experiment was carried out at the Aji Reservoir (India) using a mixture of Cetyl and Stearyl alcohol that confirmed 19.26% saving in evaporation loss. During this six-month trial, about 0.18 mcum of water was saved which otherwise might have evaporated.

Trend and Periodicity of Temperature Time Series in Ontario

The trends and periodicities in the annual and seasonal temperature time series at fifteen weather stations within Ontario Great Lakes Basins have been analyzed, for the period 1941-2005, using the statistical analyses (Fourier series analysis, t-test, and Mann-Kendall test). The stations were spatially divided into three regions: northwest (NW), southwest (SW), and southeast (SE) to evaluate spatial variability in temperature. The results of the study reveal that the annual maximum mean temperature showed increasing trend for NW, and mixed trends for SW and SE regions. The variability was found to be more for northern stations as compared to southern stations for annual extreme minimum temperature. In addition, the trend slope per 100 years for the average annual extreme minimum temperature increased within the range of -0.8°C (Stratford) to 15°C (Porcupine). The seasonal analysis demonstrated that extreme maximum temperature has an increasing trend and maximum mean temperature has a decreasing trend during summer and winter. The extreme minimum temperature for winter illustrated an increasing trend (90%) with 22% statistically significant for NW region. For the SW region, the trend is also increasing (80%) for most of the temperature variables and 25% of temperature data were significantly increased in the SW region. The SE region stations showed overall very clear increasing trends (95%) for all the temperature variables. The data also showed that 47% of data were statistically significant in the SE region. The analysis of variance accounted for by trend, significant periodicities, and random component show that the pattern is similar for the percent of variance accounted for periodicities, and random component contribute dominantly for the four temperature variables and frost free days (FFD) for all three regions. Overall, the study reveals that the extreme minimum temperature is increasing annually and seasonally, with statistically significant at many stations.

Development and Field Evaluation of a Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Network System for Hydrological Monitoring of a Small Agricultural Watershed

Hydrological monitoring and real-time access to data are valuable for hydrological research and water resources management. In the recent decades, rapid developments in digital technology, micro-electromechanical systems, low power micro-sensing technologies and improved industrial manufacturing processes have resulted in retrieving real-time data through Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) systems. In this study, a remotely operated low-cost and robust WSN system was developed to monitor and collect real-time hydrologic data from a small agricultural watershed in harsh weather conditions and upland rolling topography of Southern Ontario, Canada. The WSN system was assembled using off-the-shelf hardware components, and an open source operating system was used to minimize the cost. The developed system was rigorously tested in the laboratory and the field and found to be accurate and reliable for monitoring climatic and hydrologic parameters. The soil moisture and runoff data for 7 springs, 19 summer, and 19 fall season rainfall events over the period of more than two years were successfully collected in a small experimental agricultural watershed situated near Elora, Ontario, Canada. The developed WSN system can be readily extended for the purpose of most hydrological monitoring applications, although it was explicitly tailored for a project focused on mapping the Variable Source Areas (VSAs) in a small agricultural watershed.

Development of GIS Interface Tool for GAMES Model and Its Application to an Agricultural Watershed in Southern Ontario

Soil erosion is an important economic and environmental concern throughout the world. In order to assess soil erosion risk and conserve soil and water resources, soil erosion modeling at the watershed scale is imperative. The Guelph model for evaluating effects of Agricultural Management System on Erosion and Sedimentation (GAMES) is tailor-made for such applications;it, however, requires a significant amount of spatial information which needs to be pre-processed using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The GAMES model currently lacks any such automated tools. As such, the GAMES was loosely coupled to a GIS interface to manage the large spatial input data and to produce efficient cartographic representations of model output results. The developed interface tool was tested to simulate the Kettle Creek paired watershed in Southern Ontario, Canada. Result demonstrated that the GIS-assisted procedure increased the ability of the GAMES model in simulating such a spatially varied watershed and made the process more efficient and user-friendly. Furthermore, the quality of reporting and displaying resultant spatial output was also significantly improved. The developed GAMES interface could be applied to any watershed, and the enhancement could be used to assess soil erosion risk and conserve soil and water resources in an effective way.