Research projects and publications

In the aftermath of the events of Spring 2017, the Government of Quebec approached various players to initiate reflection on how best to manage flooding risks across the province in the context of a changing climate. This brainstorming activity culminated in a number of important realizations, including the need for comprehensive and up-to-date mapping of flood zones throughout Quebec that would foster adequate awareness of the risk inherent in land management decisions and the implementation of adaptation solutions. Following this exercise, the project INFO-Crue was launched.

The project, consisting of two consultations, has generated an initial assessment of the climate change adaptation needs of Quebec businesses.

This case study will generate hard data on the structure and impact of a continuing education initiative for municipal elected officials. The data will be used directly to improve the UMQ’s training offering, as well as other educational initiatives on adaptation for elected officials and municipal employees.

Adapting to climate change is an increasingly important concern in land use and urban planning. This raises issues that pose challenges to various parties involved in planning for the revitalization of major industrial zones. This project aims to enrich our knowledge of the regulatory possibilities that can offer solutions in this context.

The aim of this project is to draw up an inventory of work in progress and work that has been completed over the past 10 years on green infrastructure in urban areas in Quebec. It will also help to unify Quebec’s experts on urban green infrastructure and support better coordination of their research.

This study aims to measure the impact of climate change on the budgetary items of Quebec's municipal organizations.

This project has advanced our understanding of how heterogeneous ensemble simulations should be combined to maximize the information contained in climate projections.

Many climate change adaptation and mitigation measures involve changes in land use, including urban planning, agricultural practices, the planting of trees or crops for bioenergy or carbon capture, and the restoration of natural ecosystems.

This project facilitates, among other things, the identification of sources of uncertainty associated with traditional water surface profile measurements using real-time kinematic positioning (GNSS-RTK).

Many climate change adaptation and mitigation measures involve changes in land use, including urban planning, agricultural practices, the planting of trees or crops for bioenergy or carbon capture, and the restoration of natural ecosystems.

Once completed, this project will provide a robust research tool for investigating various questions related to hydrology and climate change in Quebec. It will also offer a way for the hydrological modelling community in Quebec to work together and discuss new developments in the field.

This project is making use of well-established collaborations with Mexico and Bavaria in order to allow Quebec to initiate the development of a knowledge base on practices and tools for sharing water when it is limited. 

The project aims to answer the following question: What effects will climate change have on future residential potable water consumption in southern Quebec?

This collaborative research project encourages small and medium-sized tourism businesses in the Magdalen Islands and the Laurentides region to develop and experiment with climate change adaptation measures.   

The amplification of precipitation and flow extremes in a warmer climate is greater for small watersheds, for shorter durations, and for frequent recurrences. The results show the importance of considering the size of watersheds in assessing vulnerability to increased extreme summer and fall precipitation.

The goal of this project is to document and analyze the state of knowledge on the current and future water needs of four major water-consuming industrial sectors in Quebec and to assess how the effect of climate change can be taken into account in planning for the water needs of these sectors. 
 

The aim of this project is to fill a knowledge gap on the climate leadership of Quebec companies in climate change adaptation.

The purpose of this project is to estimate the uncertainties in the flows estimated using rating curves at hydrometric stations in Quebec.

This project aims to evaluate the heat wave awareness campaign by the municipal government of Montréal targeting seniors who are vulnerable to heat, in order to determine its ability to reach them and to encourage them to follow the recommended adaptation behaviours.

The aim of the project is to develop a method for identifying sections of watercourses whose migration is sensitive to climate change.

The aim of this project is to standardize and improve the methodology for calculating the hydroclimatic indicators in the Hydroclimatic Atlas of Southern Québec.

This interdisciplinary project analyzed the challenges of residential groundwater contamination during flood events, drawing on both environmental and social approaches. 

This project aims to answer the following question : Does the improved simulation of precipitation extremes with the new generation of regional climate models with 2.5 km resolution lead to an improvement in flooding simulations by a hydrological model in southern Quebec?

This project aims to implement a new thermal simulation module in the PHYSITEL-HYDROTEL hydrological platform, as well as an LSTM deep learning model, to simulate the temperature of rivers in southern Quebec for a future edition of the Hydroclimatic Atlas of Southern Québec.

Data collected in a participatory manner can be fed into models in order to define the flood zones and the alert levels for populations and infrastructure, in particular for the rivers where more traditional data collection is not possible.

Contribution to the prioritization of watersheds to be mapped in order to ensure public safety from flooding through the use of the results and the tool.

The results of the research project will be used by the hydrologic expertise unit to improve the estimation of river flows in Quebec. 

Once completed, the methodology developed will make it possible to estimate uncertainties in extreme flow values for different return periods for all gauged sites in southern Québec. This knowledge of uncertainty will provide a better understanding of flood events and a better estimation of flood-risk areas.

By estimating water levels in ungauged areas, virtual stations contribute to the improvement of these essential tools. Based on free, easily accessible images, the approach will provide data on multiple sectors at an almost daily frequency and at little cost.

Comprehensive knowledge of an area will be made available to the people and organizations concerned, allowing them to plan emergency measures and land use with a view to adapting to climate change.

The production of a high-quality gridded meteorological dataset for Québec, and potentially the whole of North America, will open the door to several avenues of research, including measuring the impact of this grid on climate simulation bias correction, long-term hydrological forecasting, and modelling and calibration of hydrological models.

This project is a real-life case study on participatory governance being used in municipal settings to address climate change challenges at a regional scale.  The goal is to have public, community and private organizations and residents coordinate their adaptation efforts.

The results of this project will provide decision-makers with a better understanding of the risks related to extreme flood events in both gauged and ungauged areas. Annual peak flow distributions for spring and summer-autumn flood periods will be used to drive the hydraulic models in the flood zone mapping process.

The aim of this project is to study the knowledge transfer methods implemented by Agriclimat and to analyze their results. The strategies will be used to improve the knowledge transfer on climate change adaptation performed by other organizations in Quebec. 

The Climate Equity Lab’s aim is to assemble a wide range of knowledge and experience in order to co-produce an equity toolkit for climate change adaptation to raise awareness and offer support for conceptualizing and implementing fair adaptation solutions.

The aim of this project is to develop knowledge on the occupational health and safety risks associated with climate change for employees of Quebec food processing companies.

This aim of project is to quantify the current and future climate risks for apple production in Quebec to support the industry’s adaptation efforts.

This project will design ecofiscal measures and study their potential effects in order to document the issues to be anticipated if they are implemented. It will assess the utility of ecofiscal measures in supporting adaptation to climate change and the protection of species at risk.

This project will improve the consideration of water resources in the context of regional adaptation to climate change in rural areas through the identification of hazards in the area and the assessment of municipalities’ adaptive capacity.

This pre-research project aims to fill in the gaps in the literature on the vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity to climate change, as well as the differentiated impacts of climate change adaptation measures on these populations in Quebec.

The PARCS en Santé project aims to implement and evaluate a long-term intervention strategy with input from the public. This strategy is expected to protect ecosystems in peri-urban nature parks while reducing risks to human health from tick-borne diseases in a changing climate.

This project aims to support the implementation of targeted climate adaptation strategies for populations experiencing homelessness, based on gender-based analysis with an intersectional approach (GBA+) and participatory action research methods.

This project aims to improve the understanding of the Montréal public transit system’s vulnerability and exposure to extreme rainfall. It will also help identify adaptation solutions and tools supporting collaborative infrastructure governance.

This project will determine whether assimilating snow in HYDROTEL improves hydrological simulation and forecasting, and if so, under what conditions.

Public safety officials, hydrological system managers and hydroclimatology researchers will be able to better assess the impacts of climate change on water resources based on changes in vegetation cover.

This project aims to develop existing modelling tools to better represent the spatio-temporal variability of recharge in wet, cold climates like that of southern Quebec.

Under Thrust 5 of the 2020-2025 Action Plan for Responsible and Sustainable Tourism, Quebec’s Ministry of Tourism (MTO) is interested in acquiring and sharing knowledge on climate change mitigation, supporting partners in testing innovative solutions, and stimulating the mobilization of regional and sectoral players for a tourism industry that is resilient to climate change.

This project aims to strengthen the scientific robustness of groundwater recharge simulation tools in the context of climate change. This will support their use in the Hydroclimatic Atlas of Southern Québec.

The QClim’Eau initiative is the fruit of a long-standing collaboration between the ministère de l’Environnement, de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs (MELCCFP) and the Ouranos Consortium to leverage cutting-edge scientific expertise on hydroclimatology issues and to coordinate advances in the field. 
 

This project will, among other things, determine benchmarks for the implementation of spatialized flood hazard education in high school curricula in Quebec.