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Since DataStream began in 2016, we have focused on amplifying the important work of community-based monitoring groups. We’re excited that community science has been a central theme at the many gatherings we’ve attended over the past few months throughout the Great Lakes region.

For the past four years, Madawaska Kanu Centre’s office team have been tracking the river’s water quality. Once a month, unless the conditions are too icy, they measure parameters like pH levels, dissolved oxygen and transparency.

The Executive Director (ED) will play a pivotal role in leading DataStream at an exciting time of growth.

Do you collect water quality data in British Columbia or the Yukon? If YES, we want to work with you! 

The Environmental Data Manager will join DataStream at an exciting time as our user community grows across Canada. The Data Services Manager will be responsible for ensuring DataStream is responsive to this demand while offering high quality service to our existing community.

Pacific DataStream is live! Launching at the Environmental Flows Conference in Kelowna, our latest regional hub already holds millions of water quality data points from across British Columbia and the Yukon, all open and available for anyone to explore and download.  

This World Wetlands Day, we are featuring three organizations that are monitoring and protecting Canada’s wetlands.

Charlotte has a background in biology with research experience in biogeography. She is passionate about data science, open data and environmental education. Here is a short Q&A to introduce Charlotte

We got a lot done in 2023! Thank you to our partners, collaborators, and everyone monitoring their waters and sharing data!

In 2019, the Nation developed a restoration plan for the Skutik watershed. “We are looking to restore as closely as now possible to how the Peskotomuhkati lived in the territory pre-contact,” explains Meyer.

DataStream.org is designed to support the DataStream community and celebrate our collective impact. Whether you want to see who we are and what we do, are interested in sharing or using data, or want to learn about water monitoring, DataStream.org has everything you need.

To paint a clearer picture, he partnered with researchers from 13 different universities, launching the NSERC Canadian LakePulse Network in 2016. Over the next three summers, teams of grad students and post-doctoral fellows headed out to monitor lakes from Newfoundland to the Yukon.  

Meghan joined us after finishing her master's degree at the University of Waterloo. Meghan will be contributing to the continued development of DataStream by working with data contributors and users across the Great Lakes region and beyond.  

In May, the DataStream team gathered in Toronto for the 66th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research, hosted by the International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR).

DataStream is excited about a new collaboration with the Great Lakes Observation System (GLOS) and their recently launched platform, Seagull.

As part of our ongoing staff feature series, we are thrilled to profile DataStream’s Operations Coordinator, Lilian Tran!

In 2021, Living Lakes Canada launched the National Lake Blitz. The water stewardship organization had two goals: to ​help ​track the impact of climate change on Canada’s lakes and to make it easy for everyone to get involved in water monitoring, no matter their age or experience. 

Isotope data can be complex, and formatting isotope data can be a daunting task. That’s why we are so excited to release our new DataStream Guide: Best Practices for Reporting Isotope Data. The goal of the document is to support a consistent approach when handling isotope data.

In watersheds across Canada, temperatures are rising, rainfall patterns are shifting, and storms are hitting harder and more frequently. We’re seeing more droughts, floods, runoff and algal blooms. And the pace of climate change just keeps accelerating.

DataStream’s open access platform provides a place to share and access water quality data collected by diverse organizations across the country.

We want to hear from you! Take part in DataStream’s feedback survey 

The DataStream team continues to grow and we are thrilled to welcome Aislin Livingstone, Program Manager.

We got a lot done in 2022! Thank you to our partners, collaborators, and everyone monitoring their waters and sharing data!

This fall, we made up for lost time and celebrated the launch of Great Lakes DataStream with two in-person events. Great Lakes DataStream is the fourth hub of DataStream, an open access platform for sharing freshwater data across Canada. Since its release in 2021, Great Lakes DataStream has garnered over eight million data points collected by 49 monitoring groups, from Lake Superior to the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. We are thrilled to have been able to finally celebrate the official launch of Great Lakes DataStream! 

Join us for the Great Lakes DataStream Quebec Kick-Off, during the G3E Forum de Science Participative Sur L’eau.

Help us celebrate the official launch of Great Lakes DataStream at the Great Lakes Public Forum!

The DataStream team continues to grow and we are thrilled to welcome Nell Libera, Data Specialist.

Funding isn’t flowing: ending dry spell for freshwater action, is an op-ed published by the Hill Times by water monitoring leaders including Carolyn DuBois of DataStream.

to Lindsay Day, DataStream’s Program Manager, receives the Water’s Next Award in the Non-Government Leader category as part of the 13th annual Canadian Water Summit.

Today, Atlantic salmon are in hot water — literally and figuratively. Climate change and deforestation are raising the temperature of many watersheds in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. And that’s bad news for these cold-blooded creatures that already face a slew of other pressures.

Groundwater is a vitally important resource, one that is often overlooked in freshwater management. Despite its importance, in Canada we know relatively little about how groundwater behaves, its quality, or how the quality and quantity have changed over time. This is why groundwater quality is the next data type that DataStream is actively working on adding to our open data platform.

Located just east of Sault Ste. Marie, Garden River First Nation sits along the St. Marys River — the major artery connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron. Here, inland lakes, rivers and streams teem with chinook salmon, northern pike, walleye and more.

Carolyn DuBois, DataStream’s Executive Director, has been awarded a 2022 Report on Business magazine Changemakers award.  

We got a lot done in 2021! Thank you to our partners, collaborators, and everyone monitoring their waters and sharing data!

When the Canadian Freshwater Alliance (CFA) put out the call for water testing volunteers through its Lake Erie Guardians program, the response was overwhelming. Relaunched in 2021 in partnership with Water Rangers, the new monitoring initiative attracted hundreds of applications for the 50 spots available.

Each spring, volunteers take samples at more than 800 sites, stretching from Lake Erie up into the Boreal forest and from east of Ottawa all the way to the Manitoba border. Those samples are then sent back to Dorset to be analyzed for phosphorus, calcium and chloride levels.

DataStream is excited to announce the beta version release of our new Custom Download tool! As the amount of data being shared on DataStream continues to grow, so too have requests for the ability to access specific subsets of data (e.g., all arsenic data in a given region) across multiple datasets. This tool is designed to do just that.

Information ranging from lake temperatures to levels of nitrates in the water is available on Great Lakes DataStream, a new online platform for sharing water quality data from across Ontario and Quebec.

We are delighted to announce that we are partnering with RBC through Tech for Nature, to help drive the expansion of DataStream.  DataStream, an open access platform for sharing water data, currently operates in three regions--the Mackenzie basin, Atlantic Canada, and the Lake Winnipeg basin. The RBC Tech for Nature donation from the RBC Foundation is a multi-year commitment that will allow DataStream to expand across the country. Beginning in the Great Lakes, our proven model will grow to support a nationwide, innovation ecosystem. This is the latest stage in a long-term, highly productive partnership between DataStream and RBC. RBC Foundation has played an integral role in DataStream’s growth by contributing to the design and development of the blockchain technology that is integrated with the platform.  Blockchain technology enables DataStream to bring a new level of data security and transparency to water monitoring data in Canada. DataStream’s use of blockchain technology provides a way for people to verify that the data they are accessing on the platform is the same data that was originally uploaded and that it hasn’t been altered or tampered with. Blockchain diagram from here: https://lakewinnipegdatastream.ca/en/article/blockchain-and-datastream RBC Tech for Nature supports new ideas, technologies, and partnerships to solve pressing environmental challenges. Learn more at rbc.com/techfornature.

As a water researcher at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Nandita Basu creates models to help answer big questions. How well do wetlands protect against algal blooms? Where are the biggest hotspots for agricultural runoff? How is climate change affecting water quality? DataStream promises to make life easier for Basu and her colleagues. In fall 2021, the release of the latest regional hub, Great Lakes DataStream, will bring together water quality datasets throughout the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Basin in a standardized format.

Most days from March to November, Funk treks to one of the conservation authority’s 94 monitoring sites, where she collects data on everything from water temperatures to nutrient loads to aquatic bugs. Today, she’s helping bring that information out of hiding through Great Lakes DataStream.

Monitoring water quality in an area twice the size of New Brunswick is no small task. But size is just the first challenge for Ottawa Riverkeeper — a charitable organization that works to protect and improve the ecological health of the Ottawa River watershed.

DataStream and Water Rangers are teaming up to publish community water monitoring data from the Great Lakes and Saint-Lawrence regions.   Through a new hub-to-hub connection, anyone in the Water Rangers network can share data on Great Lakes DataStream, an open access hub for sharing water data set to be released this fall.  

With continued DataStream growth and expansion into the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence regions our team continues to grow too! We are thrilled to have Cristina Cismasu join us as the new Data Specialist based out of Quebec. 

Smart technologies have huge potential to improve our understanding, use, conservation, and management of the Great Lakes. That's the thinking behind the Smart Great Lakes Initiative (SGLi), which wants your input on the recently launched Common Strategy for Smart Great Lakes. The public are invited to read the Common Strategy and give feedback to katie@glos.org by September 24.

Great Lakes Data Drive Are you collecting water quality data in the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence region and looking to expand the audience for your data? As we gear up for the release of Great Lakes DataStream this fall, we’re kicking off a Data Drive to help water monitoring groups and researchers publish their data on this open-access platform. The Data Drive is taking place through the spring and summer, and there are a number of ways for water monitors to get involved.

DataStream’s Dive into Data webinar series is back for 2021! Following the success of last year’s sessions, the Dive into Data webinars will provide an opportunity to brush up on your data management skills, while connecting with other water data users.

To better understand the water data landscape in the Great Lakes region, the DataStream team has been reaching out to experts and data holders. In 2020, this included participating in a workshop that unpacked data access issues in the region, with the key takeaways published this week in a workshop report. 

What happens to water data after it has been collected by community monitoring groups? That is the driving question behind a Nova Scotia-focused research project that brought together academic, community and government voices. Led by Alice Cohen out of Acadia University in collaboration with Coastal Action and the Atlantic Water Network, and supported by the Change Lab Action Research Initiative (https://actionresearch.ca/), the research project included a workshop, interviews and online webinar, with a recent report summarizing the key findings.

DataStream’s new how-to video series provides guidance on using the open-access platform to publish and explore water monitoring data. The first four videos walk data stewards through various steps of the process, beginning with how to upload and update datasets:

A new online tool helps explain how water quality is measured and why it matters. The illustrated guide provides an introduction to some of the most important and commonly monitored aspects of water quality, including: physical properties, such as water clarity, pH and temperature chemical substances, like nutrients, metals, minerals and pollutants from human activity, and; biological characteristics, including coliform bacteria and chlorophyll

Recommendations that address how the federal government can strategically support community-based water monitoring (CBWM) efforts across Canada are now available in English and French. The Elevating Community-Based Water Monitoring in Canada documents were produced by The Gordon Foundation (who lead DataStream at the national level), Living Lakes Canada, and WWF-Canada, following a collaborative dialogue convened by the three organizations. 

2020 was a big year for us. Thanks to all who continued monitoring waters and getting the data out there!

With continued DataStream growth and expansion into the Lake Winnipeg watershed, our team continues to grow too! We are thrilled to have Mary Kruk join us as the new Water Data Specialist based out of Calgary, Alberta. 

The recently released WWF Canada 2020 Watershed Reports provide a national assessment of Canada’s freshwater. WWF Canada was able to efficiently draw on community based water monitoring (CBWM) data thanks to DataStream. Although the report shows the health of 60% of watersheds is unknown, there has been significant progress since the last assessment in 2017, with ten additional watersheds receiving a score. DataStream is designed to support communities driving the data-to-policy cycle so it is exciting to see that DataStream is playing a role in improving data access and putting community generated data on the map, so that it can be used in regional and national scale assessments and ultimately support decision-making.

DataStream’s visualization tool enables users to apply national water quality guidelines to datasets. Some key guidelines used by DataStream include the Canadian Water Quality Guidelines for the Protection of Aquatic Life  which serve as national standards set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). These guidelines provide recommended ranges for some of the physical, chemical and biological characteristics that are commonly monitored in rivers, lakes, and oceans.

“Be the water bottle”. That’s the message from DataStream Data Specialist Patrick LeClair in this practical demonstration of what good data management looks like, taken from the recent Data Management Best Practices webinar.  Wondering what he could possibly mean?  Patrick uses two vastly different water samples, a cloudy concoction and a transparent liquid, to depict data while their containers - a hard to access box and an easily opened water bottle respectively - represent databases.

Technology has helped facilitate the growth of data sharing and the rise of open data – a movement that DataStream is proud to be part of. In this post we take a look at two important and complementary sets of guiding principles that underpin best practices when it comes to data stewardship and access.

We are pleased to announce that DataStream now offers a bilingual site for sharing and accessing water quality data in Canada.   All website content is now available in French, across the Mackenzie DataStream, Atlantic DataStream, and Lake Winnipeg DataStream hubs.  

The creation of a Canada Water Agency, mandated by the federal government last year, is a unique opportunity to improve freshwater stewardship in this country. DataStream's Carolyn DuBois and Mathew McCandless of IISD Experimental Lakes Area contribute to ongoing discussions about the role of the agency.

Ensuring that water quality data on DataStream is easy to find, access, use and reuse is at the centre of our mission. For this reason, we have dedicated a lot of time exploring ways to integrate permanent identifiers into your datasets.

Since 1989, G3E has worked towards the protection of aquatic ecosystems. They have developed citizen science initiatives as well as educational and scientific tools useful for aquatic ecological monitoring. G3E invites communities to use them to keep an eye on the health of their home waters and to make informed decisions about conservation, restoration or awareness activities.

On November 27-28, a national discussion focused on identifying potential government supports for community-based water monitoring (CBWM) initiatives took place in Ottawa. More than 60 attendees, from across Canada, took part.

With Blockchain technology, DataStream is bringing a new level of data security and transparency to our open-data platform. This blockchain verification tool is currently being piloted on Atlantic DataStream.