Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators (CESI) measures the progress of the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy , report to Canadians on the state of the environment, and describe Canada’s progress on key environmental sustainability issues.
The Freshwater Quality Indicator (WQI) provides an overall measure of the ability of freshwater bodies to support aquatic life at selected monitoring stations across Canada. It is a water quality guideline-driven tool used to distill large amounts of water quality data at a monitoring station into a single index. Water quality at a monitoring station is considered excellent when ambient water quality does not exceed guidelines at any time for any of all selected parameters. When water quality is rated poor, water quality measurements usually exceed their guideline; exceedences at these stations may be large.
The NL Water Resources Management Division has been contributing the water quality monitoring data collected through the Newfoundland and Labrador Water Quality Monitoring Agreement with Environment Canada since the CESI initiative began in 2005.
Water quality monitoring sites in NL are classified as either core sites or local sites. There are 17 core sites in NL, whose data are included in the national assessment of water quality across the country. All other sites are considered ‘local’ sites, which are not part of the national network, but instead provide additional water quality information for a region. A sites water quality ranking is reported only when sufficient data is available.
Table 1: Guidelines used for computation of the CESI WQI in Newfoundland and Labrador.
For more information on CESI’s other environmental indicators, please visit their website .
Newfoundland and Labrador CESI Sites
Figure 1: CESI NL 2019 Results (Data from 2016-2018)
Figure 2: CESI NL 2019 Results by Water Quality Ranking (Data from 2016-2018)
For More information on specific sites, you can use the CESI interactive mapping tool .
Other CESI Links
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