British Columbia: BC OGC Portal Offers Water Data for All Northern Areas of BC

The BC Oil & Gas Commission (OGC) recently issued the 2015 version of its "Water Portal" - an online map-based application that provides water-related data collected by various government agencies, industry, and external groups. The portal, which now covers all of northern BC, provides users with access to:

• water quantity data (streamflow and groundwater levels);
• water quality measurements (surface and groundwater);
• weather and climate information (temperature, precipitation, snow); and
• historical observations and current conditions.

New and upgraded capabilities include:

• monitoring stations for all of Northern BC (Peace, Liard, Omineca, Skeena regions);
• the ability to search by location, station name or key word;
• filtering capabilities based on monitoring network, years of record, station status parameters, etc;
• saving map filter templates and the ability to download the data;
• enhanced charts and analytic tools.

The Water Portal currently incorporates water-related data and information from more than 19 networks including: Water Survey of Canada; BC Environment’s Environmental Monitoring System (EMS); BC Environment Snow Survey; Northern Health Authority Water System Samples; BC Hydro; Environment Canada; third party-collected data (industry and academia); and the BC Environmental Assessment Office.