Watershed Report Cards

A watershed report card is a management and evaluation tool that allows conservation authorities and their partners to track and report on watershed conditions across Ontario.

The watershed report cards are a useful method to deliver a vast amount of technical information in a user-friendly and visually interesting way. Municipalities, agencies, and other stakeholders can use the results of the report cards to inform their programs.

Watershed report cards will be ongoing, with updates every five years. Conservation authorities throughout the province can continue to provide information and updates on issues and conditions in other ways in between report cards.

Why Monitor Ontario’s Watersheds?

Watershed monitoring helps us:

• Measure environmental change to identify issues and project future conditions
• Inform decision-makers and focus natural resource management actions where they are needed most
• Track progress over time.

Conservation Authority Watershed Report Cards measure and report on three resource categories: surface water quality, forest conditions, and groundwater quality. Each category has a set of indicators as shown in the table below.