Government of Northwest Territories

Purpose

Rivers and lakes in the Northwest Territories (NWT) provide vital sources of drinking water and food for many NWT communities and are strategically monitored by the NWT’s territorial and Indigenous Governments, among other water partners. Through active collaboration with local Indigenous communities, the Government of the NWT (GNWT) uses available technologies to monitor the health of freshwater ecosystems to answer questions including whether the water remains safe to drink and the fish remain healthy to eat. However, existing sensors are costprohibitive, track limited water quality parameters and cannot efficiently perform real-time and remote monitoring. Consequently, affordable, adaptable and user-friendly remote-monitoring sensor systems are required to ensure that aquatic ecosystem integrity is maintained, especially amid ongoing concerns over cumulative effects from a variety of sources. The Project proposes to leverage NRCs existing sensor technologies in sensing to address gaps in water quality monitoring that are: 1) practical for remote environments (i.e., power and other conditions); 2) cost-effective; 3) easy to deploy; 4) sustainable.