Geoff Gunn

The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) is Canada's Freshwater Laboratory. It's 58 lakes and their watersheds in Northwestern Ontario. It was set aside in 1968 as a place where scientists with the Canadian government could explore some of the great ecosystem challenges of the time, with eutrophication being a big one. In 2014 the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), took over operation for the federal government. Since then, we’ve been operating as a Registered Charity and continuing on this important research – looking at all sorts of things from remediation of oil spills, to the impact of floods and drought on lake connectivity, among many other projects. And, with our 50-year history, long-term ecosystem research as well. So the ELA is pretty unique world-wide in that regard.

Another big part of what we are doing now is education, and opening ELA up as a platform to both educate people about the water issues that we're studying, as well as listen to their concerns and their understanding of water. And I think the whole concept of DataStream is a really important part of that. There’s a lot of value in being able to see, across watersheds, what others are up to and what they’re seeing in their area. And in bringing the information together in a standardized way. I think that’s really important in this world of big data, to make sure we aren’t just producing a lot of data but are producing good data.