Assessment of future water endowments: establishing a robust foundation to study regional water, food, energy, and environment dynamics

淡水供应安全是全世界日益关注的问题。水资源紧张被认为是最大的全球风险，也是区域不安全的主要原因。在加拿大，仅石油和农业生产每年就为国民经济贡献高达2 000亿美元的水资源，而气候变化造成的水资源变化可能会危及这两个领域。气候变化和多变性改变了水资源的空间和时间模式，并改变了冰川融水的流动，从而破坏了水资源规划。其结果将是农业、生态系统、住区、工业和能源生产之间的水资源冲突，影响某些地区的区域水、能源和粮食安全，同时为其他地区的增长提供潜在机会。对于面对不断变化的气候变化影响的长期区域水资源规划，准确预测气候变化的影响对于适应性规划是必要的。 ** 了解水供应的研究涉及一个主要主题，即由于自然变化和全球变暖而引起的气候不确定性。应用过程为基础的生态水文（地质）逻辑模型（EHGM）是最好的可用手段来研究这些问题。尽管在小尺度模拟方面取得了进展，但由于对关键水文特征的代表性不足，供水的动态模拟在区域尺度上受到限制，这些水文特征包括：（1）雪和冰川融化和径流;（2）湿、干和冷水文条件下水、植被和土壤类型之间的相互作用;（3）地表水-地下水（SW-GW）相互作用。此外，由于在气候和水文预测中对短期高频（如厄尔尼诺/厄尔尼诺/南方涛动）和长期低频（如太平洋十年期振荡）气候振荡的综合处理不佳，这些预测存在不确定性。特别是，大多数气候模式在模拟低频振荡（即PDO）方面表现不佳，因此在水量预测模式中也是如此。这项基础性的发现资助的研究将开发区域水预测模型，考虑自然特征的累积影响（例如，冰川、雪、土壤、植被、SW-GW相互作用）;人为因素（例如，水坝、灌溉、工业发展）;以及不同空间和时间尺度下的气候变化和变率情景。最终成果将是提供更好的水资源管理工具和应对水-粮食-能源-环境关系中的水安全挑战的政策。**

The security of freshwater supplies is a growing concern worldwide. The water stress has been considered as the largest global risk and the main reason for regional insecurity. In Canada, water contributes up to $200 billion annually to the national economy from petroleum and agricultural production alone that may be jeopardized by variable water resources due to climate change. Climate change and variability undermine water resource planning by changing its spatial and temporal patterns, and changes in glacial meltwater flow among others. The result will be conflicts for water among agriculture, ecosystems, settlements, industry, and energy production, affecting regional water, energy, and food security in some regions while providing potential opportunities for growth in other regions. For a long-term regional planning of water resources in the face of the evolving climate change impacts, accurate projections of the impacts of climate change is necessary for adaptive planning. ******Research towards understanding water supply deals with a major theme, that of climate uncertainty, due to both natural variability and global warming. Application of process-based eco-hydro(geo)logical models (EHGM) is among the best available means to examine these problems. Despite advances in smaller scale modelling, the dynamic simulation of water supply is limited at regional scales due to inadequate representation of key hydrologic features including (1) snow and glacier melt and runoff; (2) interaction between water, vegetation, and soil types in wet, dry, and cold hydrologic conditions; and (3) surface water-groundwater (SW-GW) interactions. Furthermore, uncertainties exist in these projections due to poor integration of both short-term high frequency (e.g. El Niño/ENSO) and long-term lower frequency (e.g. Pacific Decadal Oscillations-PDO) climatic oscillations in the climate and hydrologic projections. Especially, most climate models do not perform well at simulating the lower frequency oscillations (i.e. PDO), and therefore in water projection models.***This fundamental Discovery funded research will develop regional water predictive models that consider cumulative effects of natural features (e.g., glaciers, snow, soil, vegetation, SW-GW interaction); anthropogenic factors (e.g., dams, irrigation, industrial development); and climate change and variability scenarios under different spatial and temporal scales. The end result will be tools that provide improved water management and policy responses to challenges in water security in the water-food-energy-environment nexus. **