Canada Source Watershed Polygons (Can-SWaP): A dataset for the protection of Canada’s municipal water supply

Abstract

Over 80% of municipal (i.e., excluding industrial and agricultural) water use in Canada comes from streams, lakes, and reservoirs. These freshwater bodies and their catchments require adequate protection to secure drinking water supply for Canadians. Canada, like most countries, lacks a consolidated national dataset of municipal catchments, arguably due to gaps in data availability. Against this backdrop, we present the Canada Source Watershed Polygons dataset, or Can-SWaP. Can-SWaP was created using point locations of more than 3,300 municipal water licences defining rights to surface water withdrawal. Where possible, the resulting 1,574 catchments were assessed for accuracy in spatial coverage against provincial and local datasets. Each watershed in Can-SWaP has an estimated water volume used for municipal water purposes derived from licencing data, and several variables from RiverATLAS for investigating the integrity of surface drinking water sources in Canada. Furthermore, basing our method on the HydroSHEDS suite of global products offers a robust framework for the production of other national datasets following an established international standard.