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The story behind the story is about Younes Alila’s Flood Risk Methodology for flood protection. A complementary methodology is Jim Dumont’s Stream Health Methodology for habitat protection. Together they support holistic thinking. “The Stream Health Methodology starts with the stream and ends with the stream. The cornerstone is the flow duration relationship. Engineers routinely extrapolate way, way beyond the limits of the data and then argue fiercely about which curve fitting technique is most accurate,” stated Jim Dumont.

How water gets to a stream, and how long it takes, is not well understood among land and drainage practitioners. “A lack of explicit identification and justification of the assumptions and simplifications made in the analysis of stormwater impacts has resulted in stormwater systems that address hypothetical as opposed to actual site characteristics and development impacts,” stated Shelley Ashfield. “Learning from this experience, the Town now requires that assumptions be stated and explained. We are saying WHAT is your assumption, and WHY.”

Columbia Engineering researchers have demonstrated that stormwater runoff extremes have been dramatically increasing in response to climate change and other anthropogenic changes to the environment. The researchers also found that storm runoff has a stronger response than precipitation to human-induced changes (climate change, land-use land-cover changes, etc). “Our work helps explain the underlying physical mechanisms related to the intensification of precipitation and runoff extremes,” Pierre Gentine said. “

A river can be defined as ‘A large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake or another river’ or more simply as ‘A large quantity of a flowing substance’. Obviously, under the second definition a road could be defined as a river and potentially under the first if again our interpretation of ‘natural’ is as flexible as current common usage! Why is such a seemingly silly and perhaps confusing question important?” stated Katherine Daniell.

“Among land and drainage practitioners, how water gets to a stream and how long it takes is not well understood. Unintended consequences of this failure to ‘get it right’ include degraded urban streams, more flooding, more stream erosion, less streamflow when needed most, and an unfunded infrastructure liability,” states Kim Stephens. “In 2006, American engineer and textbook author Andy Reese coined the term voodoo hydrology to both describe drainage practice and draw attention to the need for changing the way drainage engineers practice their trade.”

“By sharing the story of Shelly Creek, we want readers to recognize that erosion is a common issue impacting salmon and trout habitats in small streams, draining into the Salish Sea,” states Peter Law. “Existing standards of practice have resulted in negative impacts. Continuing to use those standards will result in further environmental degradation of the watershed and loss of stream productivity. Building support for action starts with community engagement.”

“If mitigation is about CARBON, then adaptation is about WATER. Hence, being able to quickly and effectively model how the ‘water balance’ may change over time is a critical input to local government decision processes,” stated Chris Jensen. ” We heard from communities that they desired an easy to use tool, one that would help them understand and identify evaluate options for climate adaptation. This need served as a catalyst for development of the Climate Change Module.”

The Water Balance Methodology has its genesis in the whole-system approach that Dr. Ray Linsley (1917-1990) championed more than 60 years ago. As a professor at Stanford University, he pioneered the development of continuous hydrologic simulation as the foundation for water balance management. In the 1960s, Linsley championed the paradigm-shift from empirical relationships to computer simulation of hydrologic processes. The webinar is about the whole-system, water balance approach that is the hydrologic modelling foundation for Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management.

“It is the combination of diverse needs, ideas and solutions that will make the vision for the Center work,” stated Dr. Rowney. “That is one of the reasons we’re so pleased with the agreement just reached with the British Columbia Partnership for Water Sustainability. We have many needs in common, and many ideas to share. The leadership shown by the Partnership has led to a body of knowledge from which others can learn.”

“So what is the nub of the issue? In standard practice, only surface runoff is considered, and this has led to degraded streams. The other pathways by which rainfall reaches streams are ignored,” explained Jim Dumont. “If communities are to truly benefit from use of nature’s assets to provide vital community infrastructure services, then we must change the engineering standard-of practice to one that is state-of-the-art and reflects real-world hydrology.”