Lake Hydrology - Wapusk National Park

Wapusk National Park protects a vast landscape of coastal salt marshes, countless lakes and ponds, and a diversity of boreal-tundra interface habitats, and serves as staging areas for migrating birds, and habitat for a diversity of wildlife. Shallow lakes and ponds are created in part by thermokarst processes resulting from the melting of ground ice in areas underlain by permafrost. In northern areas, climate change brings fluctuations in temperature, permafrost and snow fall and cover which affect lake dynamics, water composition and water levels, and the plants and animals dependent on them. Lake hydrology is assessed based on hydroelocological methods developed during the International Polar Year in Vuntut National Park, and initiated in Wapusk in 2010 by the Hydroecological Team, a multidisciplinary research group from Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo led by Dr. Brent Wolfe. Lake water from forest, wetlands and coastal ecosystem habitats is monitored using the composition of naturally occurring isotopic tracers to assess the evaporation to input ratio (E/I ratio). The E/I ratio, for which high values indicate lake drying, is used as a coarse assessment of climate change for ecological integrity monitoring for state-of-the-park reporting. We are currently publishing part 1 of the data; a more complete dataset will be posted at a later date. This provides collaborators the opportunity to publish papers and finalise theses.

Datasets available for download

• Lake Hydrology - Wapusk National ParkCSV
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• Lake Hydrology - Wapusk National Park - Data DictionaryCSV
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• EI ratio
• EvaporationInput ratio
• Nature and Environment
• Thermokarst processes
• Wapusk National Park
• climate change
• coastal ecosystem
• ecological...
• forest
• goose impact
• hydrology
• peatlands
• stable isotope
• water samples
• wetlands

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (31%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 20, 2025, 02:51 (UTC)
Created	October 20, 2025, 02:51 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	Lake Hydrology - Wapusk National Park
Description A description of the dataset.	Wapusk National Park protects a vast landscape of coastal salt marshes, countless lakes and ponds, and a diversity of boreal-tundra interface habitats, and serves as staging areas for migrating birds, and habitat for a diversity of wildlife. Shallow lakes and ponds are created in part by thermokarst processes resulting from the melting of ground ice in areas underlain by permafrost. In northern areas, climate change brings fluctuations in temperature, permafrost and snow fall and cover which affect lake dynamics, water composition and water levels, and the plants and animals dependent on them. Lake hydrology is assessed based on hydroelocological methods developed during the International Polar Year in Vuntut National Park, and initiated in Wapusk in 2010 by the Hydroecological Team, a multidisciplinary research group from Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo led by Dr. Brent Wolfe. Lake water from forest, wetlands and coastal ecosystem habitats is monitored using the composition of naturally occurring isotopic tracers to assess the evaporation to input ratio (E/I ratio). The E/I ratio, for which high values indicate lake drying, is used as a coarse assessment of climate change for ecological integrity monitoring for state-of-the-park reporting. We are currently publishing part 1 of the data; a more complete dataset will be posted at a later date. This provides collaborators the opportunity to publish papers and finalise theses.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	EI ratio EvaporationInput ratio Nature and Environment Thermokarst processes Wapusk National Park climate change coastal ecosystem ecological... forest goose impact hydrology peatlands stable isotope water samples wetlands
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2017-10-01
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/a889e2bc-4629-4977-871d-68010b1f231a
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	Parks Canada | Parcs Canada
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.	[email protected]
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	None
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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