Development of an Information Portal for the Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative

The Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative was created as part of Canada’s Action Plan on clean water. Its focus is to deal with excessive lake inputs of nutrients from surface runoff and municipal wastewater. Understanding the dynamics of nutrient loading, the associated algal blooms and resulting changes in fish populations, beach closures, and ecosystem imbalance requires access to various sources of data, information, knowledge, expertise and tools. Such critical components are delivered through the Lake Winnipeg Basin Initiative Information Portal, which integrates multiple geospatial and non-geospatial datasets of information pertaining to the basin and serves as a data, information and modelling portal. With data coming from many disparate sources, the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure standards are applied to ensure interoperability. The “Community of Models” allows the modellers to post their model and results, and also allows the portal users to comment on the results to ensure a healthy dialogue.