By Alixx Hettinga, Communications Coordinator for the WaterPortal Society
The Alberta WaterPortal Society is releasing fun, new, online materials to make learning about water an adventure you can have from home.
These new resources include interactive games and short animations that make learning fun for everyone. They explore how human actions impact the Nexus between communities, agriculture, and energy, and the resource that ties them all together: water. As the population in Alberta increases, users must contemplate how to balance the demand for water for food, energy, people and the environment.

The Alberta WaterPortal’s “Follow the Drop” game helps to explore this challenge with a choose-your-own-adventure that takes players through the Bow River in the form of a single water droplet. Explore the interconnections between water, energy, communities and agriculture as you move as a tiny snowflake or raindrop and journey along the current. The end is uncertain, and the choice is up to you. Will you make it to the river’s end? Will you evaporate along the way? Or will you become pizza before you can make it to the point where the Bow merges with Oldman River?
Along with the adventure game, a series of short animated videos introduce viewers to key conservation concepts, prompting innovative thinking about the interconnectedness of Alberta’ resources. The videos focus on a healthy environment, population growth, protecting water quality and the complex relationships between all water users in a watershed.
“Understanding the Water Nexus is the stepping-stone to managing our water so that we have a sustainable economy and also maintain a healthy environment,” says Dr. Kim Sturgess, the WaterPortal’s Executive Director and a leading water management expert in Canada.

These new resources are part of the third phase of the Alberta Water Nexus project, which was made possible by the generous support of the Carlson Family Foundation, Nutrien, and Enbridge, along with the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.
The new online activities are additions to the online learning tools already published by the Alberta WaterPortal Society. Find a list of other fun activities here.