This is a project initiated by the Quebec’s Ministry of Environment. The main goal is to assess the operational adaptability of three water resources systems to climate change: the Haut Saint-François, du Liève River and the Kenogami reservoir. A secondary objective is to develop HEC-ResSim models for each system.

Du Lievre River drains a sub-basin on the left bank of the Ottawa River in Canada. Actually, du Lievre River runs in parallel to the Gatineau River described here. The water system includes three reservoirs: Mitchinamecus, Kiamika, and Poisson Blanc. The first two are located upstream and have a storage capacity of 533 and 435 hm³, respectively. Further downstream, we find Poisson Blanc, a 910 hm³ reservoir that controls a cascade of hydropower plants with a combined capacity of 238 MW.  The main operating objectives are flood control, energy generation, recreation, and ensuring environmental flows.

Lake Kénogami, the second system, is located in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region in Quebec. It drains an area of 3390 km² mostly via three rivers: Pikauba (122.96 km), aux Écorces (107.76 km) and Cyriac (71.66 km), whose sources are located in the Laurentides wildlife reserve. Lake Kénogami then flows into the Saguenay via two outlets: the Chicoutimi and aux Sables rivers. The Kénogami reservoir is managed for flood control purposes, for hydropower generation, water supply, recreation, and to preserve aquatic ecosystems. 

The third system, the Upper Saint-François River Basin, is located in the southern part of Quebec, on the left bank of the St Lawrence River. The water system involves the Saint François River, controlled by two reservoirs Lake Saint-François and Lake Aylmer with a combined storage capacity of 941 million cubic meters, and an uncontrolled tributary the Salmon River. Both reservoirs are managed by the Ministry of Environment through its water agency (CEHQ). The main operational objectives are: (i) to protect the municipality of Weedon and several residential areas around the lakes from floods, (ii) to ensure minimum river discharges and water levels in the lakes to preserve aquatic ecosystems, (iii) to provide the downstream run off river power station with a reliable water discharge; and (iv) to maintain desired water levels in the lakes for recreational uses during the summer.

To assess the operational adaptability of those systems, we developed a hydrologically-driven approach organized around (1) the use of a large ensemble of GCM hydro-climate projections to drive a climate stress test; (2) the bottom-up clustering of those hydrologic projections based on hydrologic attributes that are both relevant to the region of interest and interpretable by the operators; and finally, (3) the identification of adapted operating policies using an optimization-based hydro-economic model. More details on this approach can be found in Sant’ Anna et al. (2022).

Articles

• Sant’Anna C., Tilmant A. and M. Pulido-Velazquez, 2022. A hydrologically-driven approach to climate change adaptation for multipurpose multireservoir systems. Climate Risk Management, 36, https://DOI.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100427
• Sant’Anna C. and A. Tilmant, 2025. Designing decision-relevant partitions of the exposure space for the adaptation of reservoir operating policies under climate-change uncertainty. Canadian Water Resources Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2025.2512787