Water Soft Paths
IISD's Water Innovation Centre (WIC), in partnership with Manitoba Water Stewardship, is undertaking a program to provide a policy framework to achieve sustainable water resources management. The project is a multi-year program in which we will analyze water use (in parts of Manitoba south of, and including, the Winnipeg River and Saskatchewan River watersheds) and then use a "soft paths" approach to make recommendations for future policy direction.
The emerging concept of water soft paths is about changing the way we use water. A water soft path approach involves envisioning a future state of water sustainability and designing a feasible policy pathway to achieve that state. The water soft path is characterized by wide use of diverse, often decentralized systems. This project will critically examine the ecosystem services (which are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems) for which we use water and appropriately match water quality to its intended use.
IISD has developed a water budget model using Systems Thinking Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation (commonly known as STELLA) systems modelling software. This model predicts water availability parameters for 94 agricultural sub-watersheds in southern Manitoba. This model can be used to predict runoff, evapotranspiration, water surplus and deficit, and as well as water stress on vegetation. Climate change predictions are being run through the model to predict future water availability to form the possible future state for a water soft path. Cropping scenarios can be developed to determine how watersheds will perform under other cropping scenarios.
