As the snow melts and the rivers swell this spring, a steady stream of information about the latest water levels around the Yukon will flow into the computers of Environment Canada's Yukon Monitoring Operations office in Whitehorse.

These data come from automated monitoring stations located in drainage basins around the territory. Every three hours the stations send information to a satellite orbiting high above the earth. The satellite sends the information back down to earth, where the signal is picked up by a receiving dish on the roof of the Whitehorse Weather Centre and fed straight into Weather Centre computers.

Russ Gregory, acting head of Environment Canada's Yukon Monitoring Operations office, is excited by the potential of the new technology.

"We never had that capability before, but with the new weather centre, they've got all the downloading paraphernalia and we just access their computer."

In the past, information from the automated sites was downloaded at a station in Maryland. Because of the expense of long-distance telephone calls to Maryland, the Whitehorse office collected the information only once a day. Before that, the information took even longer to reach Whitehorse, Gregory says.

"We used to have to wait until our next site visit and physically take a chart off the recorder or download a file into a laptop and bring it back."

Only about a quarter of the 67 monitoring stations operated by Environment Canada's Yukon Monitoring Operations office automatically send their data by satellite, but those stations are spread out in order to give as complete a picture as possible, Gregory says. The agency likes to have automated stations on the upper basins of rivers, to catch the spring rise in water flow before it reaches areas lower down the river.

Stations on the upper basin of the Stewart River and at its mouth will let Environment Canada know if the river is rising high enough and fast enough to potentially flood Mayo and Dawson.

"It still may flood," says Gregory, "but there should be plenty of warning."

Later in the season, Environment Canada gets requests for streamflow information related to recreational use. Tour operators on rivers like the Tatshenshini call to see what the water levels are before they set out on a trip.

"The tour operators have caught on that it's a service they can access, so that they know what they are dealing with before they even reach the river," says Gregory.

Industry users like Yukon Electric also use data from the automated stations to monitor stream and lake levels where they operate, Gregory says.

"For example, take Marsh Lake," he says. "It's critical to know for licensing requirements what the elevation of the lake is."

Many of the automated stations send back more than just information about streamflow and lake levels. They have the capability to record precipitation, sediment, conductivity, and a number of other measurements related to water quality. Some, if not all of the information, will be beamed up to the satellite every three hours.

"We also do weather out of here," says Gregory. "All of the remote weather monitoring is handled out of this office by the meteorological inspector and electronics technician."

In addition, Environment Canada operates a number of monitoring stations on contract for resource companies that perform environmental monitoring as part of their resource use agreements.

"It used to be primarily engineering work," Gregory says. "We were gathering a lot of data that was used in engineering work -- hydro systems, for example. Now it's moving more towards a new way of looking at things, an integrated monitoring system. Water, weather, the whole ball of wax."

For more information about monitoring Yukon lakes and streams, contact the Environment Canada's Yukon Monitoring Operations office, Whitehorse.