What is the status/state of our water resources and how are they changing? Understanding streamflow conditions throughout a jurisdiction, if they are changing over time, and being able to communicate this information to managers and the public is important. Although historical and real-time streamflow data are publicly available, there are few examples of public-facing reporting frameworks related to status and trends in water resources. Such frameworks need indicators best suited to assess status and trends in those hydrologic characteristics most relevant to decision making such as knowing and effectively communicating “how large/small is x”, “how does x compare to ‘normal’ conditions”, “is x increasing/decreasing” and “is there a significant trend in x”? Building such a framework needs to balance supporting informed decisions for non-hydrologists without the scientific knowledge of the [1] sensitivity of indicators to data quality, [2] spatial focus on change (i.e. occurring locally or more broadly), [3] appropriate temporal scope for the analysis (i.e. period of record, climate standard normals, or smaller windows), [4] analytical methods best for calculating change, [5] methods that are robust, reproducible, and transferrable, and [6] visualization of results. We present ideas to address these questions and to stimulate a discussion for development of a trustable framework for reporting status and trends in Canadian waters.
