Canada's Premier National Freshwater Research Facility

Supporting critical water research to safeguard Canadian water resources in an era of rapid change

GWFO is led by the University of Saskatchewan and is a partnership amongst twelve universities, providing essential data to help researchers and other users develop sustainable water resource management solutions. The geographical scope of GWFO covers most of the major river basins in Canada with exemplary observation sites that provide key insights on water cycling and quality.

OPEN ACCESS TO FRESHWATER DATA

64

INSTRUMENTED WATER OBSERVATION SITES

In lakes, rivers, wetlands, glaciers, and drainage basins across Canada

15

DEPLOYABLE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS

For specialized field data acquisition

18

STATE‑OF‑THE‑ART WATER LABORATORIES

At partner universities for detailed water quality, biological, and other analyses

Real-Time & Historical Data

Urgently needed freshwater data collected from GWFO's instrumented observing sites inform the development and testing of water prediction models, allow changes in water sources to be monitored, underpin diagnosis of risks to water security, and help in the design of solutions to ensure the long-term sustainability of Canadian water resources.

WaterNet

Information Hub

View GWFO's catalogue of data and related metadata from GWFO and prior water sciences programs, with detailed information on and linkages amongst datasets, researchers and projects, observation sites and facilities, hydrological model workflows and outputs, publications, and other information across the program.

Visit Info Hub

Data Centre

The primary access point for GWFO's open-access data, located on WaterNet. The Data Centre allows the search, visualisation, and download of data by variable, by site, and recent telemetry.

Visit Data Centre