Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The main goal of this research program is to project the impacts of future climate change in terms of calculating and predicting water balance parameters in a watershed including precipitation, evapotranspiration and runoff. This research will advance scientific knowledge on hydrological system modelling, which is vital for decision-makers to assess vulnerable areas and formulate future adaptation strategies. This research will assist in the development of novel, practical and feasible methodologies to minimize potential negative environmental effects of climate change in urban and agricultural watersheds. Specifically, through objective 1 this research focuses on improving scientific methods of physically modelling a wide variety of hydrological systems with emphasis on evapotranspiration for appropriate watershed management using integrated artificial intelligence techniques. The second objective of this proposal is aimed at identifying the impact of climate change for both the calculation and prediction of watershed runoff by developing an automated method based on the new and enhanced integrated models developed in objective 1 to protect runoff-vulnerable areas. The main outcome of these findings will be enhanced accuracy of hydrological modelling outputs to overcome the shortcomings in previous studies; reliable approaches showing the relationship between various control variables and the process physics; and assess the uncertainty in the developed model prediction. This knowledge is vital for users and decision-makers undertaking sustainable watershed protection in an environmentally safe and financially responsible manner to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change, consequently benefitting the Canadian public and protecting the environment. This research program will support 3 Doctoral, one Masters and ten Undergraduate students over the five-year duration of the project. The students will develop new water resources management technologies, which are not only in high demand in sustainable development but are also expected to result in jobs and income for Canada.