How Secure is Canada's Bountiful Fresh Water Resource?

We think of Canada as a vast land studded with lakes assuring a bountiful supply of fresh water.

Things change.

Across the high north, lakes are vanishing - much faster than we had imagined.

Arctic lakes are drying out nearly a century earlier than projected, depriving the region of a critical source of fresh water, according to new research.

Models had predicted that as warmer weather thaws the Arctic, melting ice would feed into lakes, causing them to expand. Eventually, as ice melted away, those lakes would drain and dry out, sometime later this century, according to earlier projections. But satellite imagery reveals that lakes across the Arctic are shrinking rapidly today.

Researchers tracked a distinct downward trend in Arctic lake cover from 2000 to 2021, observing declines across 82 percent of the study area, which included large swaths of Canada, Russia, Greenland, Scandinavia, and Alaska. As warmer air and more abundant autumn rainfall melt permafrost around and beneath Arctic lakes, water is draining away, scientists say.

This should be a warning to the Liberal government that is struggling to come up with ways to deal with the toxic tailing ponds of the Athabasca Tar Sands.  One option the government admits it is considering is draining those ponds into the Athabasca River that eventually flows to the Mackenzie River basin, the world's third largest watershed.