Montreal, Canada. 01-14 June, 2008
The Brace Centre for Water Resources Management hosted two staff members of the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) for two weeks in June 2008, as part of a training course in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). This was the second such course organized under the Caribbean Water Initiative (CARIWIN), with the previous course held in June-July 2007. Hydrologists and meteorologists from CIMH were offered the opportunity to learn through a combination of presentations, field tours and workshops.
Topics ranged from agricultural best management practices to climate change, and from workshops on watershed and groundwater modelling to sustainable IWRM. The trainees explored the host of learning resources at the Macdonald campus library, including online journals, books and videos. A valuable addition to this year’s course was an information tour of the J.S. Marshall Radar Observatory, which provides real-time weather forecasts for the Montreal region as a part of the Canadian radar network.
Several field visits were organized to enhance the experiential learning component of the course. These included an on-campus tour of a constructed wetland for the treatment of industrial wastewaters; a tour of hydrological and water quality research stations in Southern Quebec’s agriculture intensive Missisquoi Bay region; and an irrigation project in Leamington, Southern Ontario.
The short course was very well received by the CIMH staff, who commended the manner in which the discussions addressed the challenges and barriers the Caribbean region was experiencing, with respect to water management. Feedback received from one of the participants highlights this positive experience:
“Formal links have been made between CIMH and professors, post-doctorates and other researchers at McGill University. With this acquired knowledge CIMH intends to incorporate the awareness of new technologies and techniques into its current training courses and improve on its product and application development. These linkages and course development activities will lend to the sustainability of CARIWIN and provide the necessary ground work for future collaborations.”
Please browse through the links on the right for presentations and documents related to the course.