Monitoring groundwater in the Kootenays with centralized modern data management
In the heart of the Kootenays, BC lies the Columbia River Basin, where glacial deposits have created a complex network of aquifers. Living Lakes Canada, a water science and stewardship non-profit, is pioneering a groundwater monitoring program to protect underground water resources in the basin. This mountainous region, shaped by millions of years of geological forces, contains hundreds of small aquifers. Some of these are interconnected with each other, while others are connected with surface waters that serve as crucial water sources for the surrounding ecosystems and communities. The bedrock geology ranges from ancient metamorphic rocks to younger sedimentary formations, creating a challenging water management and monitoring environment.
In this complex hydrogeological landscape, many residents rely on groundwater as their primary water source, making effective monitoring not just beneficial but essential. Before Living Lakes’ program, groundwater monitoring in the region was fragmented at best. The province monitors several wells in the Columbia River Basin as part of the Provincial Groundwater Observation Well Network, but these do not cover the full range of aquifer types and climatic conditions that exist across the region. There are isolated monitoring efforts by various consultants working on different projects, but these data are generally not publicly accessible for collaborative analysis and are typically collected over short time periods.
Building a network: From private wells to regional coverage
Carol Luttmer, an environmental consultant with over six years of experience at Living Lakes, heads up the groundwater monitoring program in the Columbia Basin. With limited program funds, the cost of drilling wells– which can range from $20,000 to $50,000 or higher per well – was prohibitive, so Living Lakes turned to the community to find existing wells. "We focused on finding well owners that were not extracting water," she explains. This approach allows her team to deploy instrumentation into the well to track water level changes throughout the year, capturing both seasonal variations and long-term trends.
The strategy for the monitoring program was to seek community engagement at all levels. The provincial government completed a review of its Provincial Groundwater Observation Well Network in 2009 that identified priority aquifers for monitoring. Living Lakes began its search for wells to monitor in those aquifers, but they didn't stop there. "We had the list of priority aquifers from the province, but we were also responding to concerns from First Nations, community members and local governments who wanted to see monitoring in areas important to them,” Luttmer recounts.
Through an extensive outreach campaign utilizing local newspapers and community newsletters, and attending community events, Living Lakes recruited well owners to participate in the monitoring network. Today, the program has an impressive coalition of partners across BC's Columbia River Basin, including local governments, municipalities, water supply system operators, First Nations communities, the Nature Trust of BC, and private landowners. This diverse network of 32 active monitoring wells provide valuable insight into the region's groundwater dynamics.
The program has found a way to fill in data gaps. "Some municipalities or organizations hire consultants to do groundwater studies for a year or two and will put data loggers in to take water level measurements, but they may not have the capacity to keep going with data collection over the long term," Luttmer notes. “We can step in to continue long-term monitoring that provides multi-year publicly available data sets.” Living Lakes’ intervention provides continuity in data collection, building valuable historical datasets that are crucial for understanding long-term trends in groundwater availability.
Creating a powerful single source of truth
At the heart of this groundwater program is modern data management software. Through a sponsorship, Living Lakes gained access to the Aquarius platform by Aquatic Informatics, allowing them to effectively manage and publish its water information. This sponsorship aligns Living Lakes with other provincial networks that also use the software, providing seamless data integration across different monitoring programs and enabling data sharing and analysis of groundwater trends.
The groundwater program tracks hourly groundwater levels in the volunteer observation wells. In collaboration with the well owners, five dedicated technicians conduct three field visits at pivotal times of the year: spring (snow melt), midsummer (drought levels), and fall (heavy rains). Field technicians download the hourly water level data and utilize ArcGIS's Survey123 for meta-data collection, enabling efficient bulk uploads of field visit information into Aquarius. Some well owners contribute monthly data downloads, providing regular data updates and streamlining the review process.
Braeden Toikka, Water Monitoring Coordinator with Living Lakes, spends most of his time collecting hydrometric data and overseeing volunteer observation wells. He has had a positive experience with the software: "Unlike custom-coding software or Excel, working with the data in Aquarius is intuitive; there's not a steep learning curve.”
In some cases, Living Lakes can get the water level data directly from the sensors using the manufacturer's software or have Aquarius calculate pressure to water level within the program. “It's nice to have that flexibility to process data using external software or within Aquarius. Loggers aren’t always perfect, so being able to include all the raw data and go back and regenerate the level data from first principles is helpful for troubleshooting,” adds Toikka.
Streamlining quality assurance
Quality assurance is paramount in groundwater monitoring and for the program's future. The software's comprehensive suite of tools for error detection, data review and corrections, flagging, and grading reduces tedious manual processes while ensuring data integrity.
For the program to prove its worth and find additional funding to add more wells and capabilities, it’s vital to demonstrate that the data is quality assured. One of the tools Luttmer likes is data grading, saying, “The way it manages the data is great – you can confidently make corrections while the raw data remains in the background, so it’s easy to go back to the raw data at any point if you need to.” During this process, the team can make notes to give background on the rationale for corrections or note any special circumstances, like equipment failures. “The software makes it easy to demonstrate quality data thanks to this grading tool,” said Luttmer.
The impact of this program is far-reaching, sharing its quality-assured data through the Living Lakes Columbia Basin Water Hub, makes it accessible to the general public in easy to interpret graphs. Data are also being shared with the BC provincial government’s real time water data tool, which is typically where researchers, academics, governments, and consultants go to look for data. Consolidating water data sources is key. As many government and private water organizations across Canada, including the BC Ministry of Environment and Parks and the Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship use Aquarius, it makes it much easier to share and extrapolate data from each other.
The focus right now is water quantity, but the software is also well suited for tracking water quality if that becomes of interest at any time. Over time, Luttmer hopes also to pull in climate data, to compare groundwater data with climate conditions. The Living Lakes groundwater program is part of the broader Columbia Basin Water Monitoring Framework, which is also collecting surface water and climate data. These data are managed in the same Aquarius database, providing tremendous benefits for analyzing the relationships among surface water, groundwater, and climate once longer data sets are collected.
Seeking funding to secure a sustainable future
Living Lakes is dependent on grants from the government as well as private donations and foundations. The program is currently unable to expand by adding more wells until it secures more funding.
“This region has complicated geology and climate conditions, so we'd like to monitor as much as we can and provide this information to local people impacted by the availability of groundwater,” said Luttmer. “Now that we have a solid protocol for monitoring and managing data in Aquarius we can share our data easily and expand efficiently when funding is secured. In other words, our funding dollars will go further as we can easily add more wells and additional layers of data,” said Luttmer. There are 144 mapped aquifers in the region, and there are many wells in areas where aquifers have not yet been mapped, so the program is doing a prioritization study to identify vulnerable aquifers and expand most effectively.
As climate change continues to impact water resources around the world, the value of the Living Lakes’ water monitoring work becomes increasingly apparent to the Columbia Basin and surrounding regions. The objective of the monitoring is to track these changes and support informed water management and stewardship. "Sharing our data with partners will help to keep our communities safe and sustainable through research, community planning, and decision-making around climate change and freshwater needs," Luttmer concludes, pointing to a future where data-driven decisions help preserve the region’s water.
