Dr. Mike Quinn, Talisman Energy Research Chair, Mount Royal University, and Dr. Mary-Ellen Tyler of the Faculty of Environmental Design are the co-principal investigators of one of the four successful proposals in the Canadian Water Network Centre of Excellence’s recent national competition “Advancing Decisions for Hydraulic Fracturing and Water”. The CWN competition identified one national team for each of four thematic research areas related to Hydraulic Fracturing and Water after two rounds of expert reviews. The thematic area addressed by the Quinn and Tyler proposal is Landscape impacts of hydraulic fracturing development/operations on surface water/watersheds. The other three successful national teams by theme are the University of Alberta (wastewater treatment), Dalhousie University (governance) and the University of Calgary (groundwater). Dr. Cathy Ryan of Geoscience is the groundwater team leader.
The Canadian Water Network Centre of Excellence, located at the University of Waterloo, has a mandate “To establish and nurture partnerships and communities of practice that bring together multidisciplinary research excellence and water managers providing innovation and highly qualified people to address water resource management”.
The Advancing Decisions for Hydraulic Fracturing and Water research program addresses “the increased public and private sector interest in ensuring that decisions surrounding the application and management of hydraulic fracturing are informed by the best available science”. Funding for this research has been provided by NSERC and SSHRC in partnership with Industry Canada and Health Canada.
Each of the selected university-based national research teams will address the current state of knowledge and research directions which could inform and support decision-making related to hydraulic fracturing and water. This work will be conducted in an intense one year “knowledge integration” process requiring a range of relevant disciplines and end user expertise to identify decision-making needs and knowledge gaps.
Hydraulic fracturing has been identified as one of the University of Calgary’s “Grand Challenges”. The Quinn and Tyler landscape impacts team includes researchers from the University of Regina, Trent University (EVDS alumnus Dr. Stephen Hill), University of New Brunswick, Memorial University and Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business, Faculty of Science and Technology and Miistakis Institute. In addition to Dr. Tyler, core team members from U of C include three research chairs: Dr.Chris Huegenholtz and Dr. Joe Arvai from Geography and Dr. Anil Mehotra from Engineering.