DataStream and Water Rangers team up to accelerate data sharing
August 20, 2021
An exciting collaboration that began in the Great Lakes will make it easier for Water Rangers testers anywhere to share data on DataStream.
Water Rangers equip communities throughout Canada with the tools to actively monitor and manage their waters. Now, through a new hub-to-hub connection, anyone in the Water Rangers network can increase the visibility and impact of their data by sharing it on DataStream as well.
We know that water monitoring and data management are a lot of work. By improving the data flows between our platforms, groups can take advantage of the benefits of both, while only uploading data once.
On DataStream, community-collected data can be found alongside monitoring results from government and academic research. Because datasets from these diverse programs can be downloaded in the same standardized format, the data are analysis-ready and can feed into larger studies. Scientists can easily access this data to inform their research, while policy-makers can use it in decision-making.
When tools like ours can connect and work together, it benefits the whole water community and amplifies the important work that monitoring groups are doing.
Photo: Cassidy Swanston
Meet Our Team: Meghan McLeod
Meghan joined us at the beginning of the year right after finishing her master's degree at the University of Waterloo. Her studies focused on nutrient contamination in the Lake Erie basin. She used long-term data and process-based models to predict past, present, and future nitrogen storage in the surrounding sub-basins of Lake Erie. Meghan will be contributing to the continued development of DataStream by working with data contributors and users across the Great Lakes region and beyond.
A week at the International Association for Great Lakes Research Conference
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).
National Lake Blitz makes citizen science a cinch
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.