Suggested Locations for the Placement of Environment Canada's New Hydrometric Stations in the Georgia Basin

CONCLUSION

The hydrology of the Georgia Basin possesses a strong spatial component. Factors such as landforms, distance from the coast, and precipitation type have lead to different hydrological processes being spatially distributed throughout the basin. Hydrometric stations attempt to capture this hydrologic behaviour and are placed so as to maximize our understanding. Sometimes, however, there are gaps in this data and interpolation is needed. Too much reliance on interpolation, however, should be rectified by reevaluating and improving a hydrologic network.

This project strives to address the data under-representation issue that arose in my paper, "Hydrologic Zonation of Georgia Basin, British Columbia". By performing a multicriteria analysis and weighted linear combination of factors of transportation, hydrologic zonation, and stream order, I attempted to find possible new locations for Environment Canada's hydrometric stations while "filling in the data gaps" that I observed currently existed in the network. My analysis successfully resulted in seven good candidates for consideration that were selected from across a large region, were accessible by one or two forms of transportation, and had varying watershed characteristics. Although the issue of redundancy was not addressed for the existing stations, it was something I took into consideration while I made my final selection of the new station locations. 

I believe that there could be a practical application of my analysis by Environment Canada with perhaps some revision of my current factors and, no doubt, the addition of some more. I am aware that the nature of hydrology is more complex than even I have presented here.

Finally, on a personal note, allow me to say that I enjoyed working on this project, (despite the insane amount of time it took), and considered it to be a very rewarding learning experience.