In 2005 COMAP supported the Muskoka Water Quality Initiative (WQI), which was a collaborative project designed to engage local citizen volunteers and other stakeholders in the protection and enhancement of surface water quality and other environmental characteristics of west Muskoka and south Parry Sound under a scientifically-based ecological monitoring and lake water quality research program.
To achieve the project's objectives, volunteers were engaged in collecting, analyzing and reporting on E.coli and total coliform levels, total phosphorus concentration, turbidity and temperature of their lakes. A robust education program including workshops, seminars and articles and other communication materials complements the scientific program.
The Muskoka Lakes Association (MLA) is one of the largest and oldest cottagers' groups in Canada. The WQI was delivered by Citizens' Environment Watch (CEW), an environmental non-governmental organization.
COMAP used WIDE to deploy the WQI. WIDE is a comprehensive web-enabled solution to support manipulation operations on maps and map-related data that conforms to OpenGIS CGDI standards. The Muskoka Lakes Association solution presents spatial data using W3C Scalable Vector Graphics technology:
- OpenGIS standard GML national road map lat-long vector data and
- UTM Landsat 7 panchromatic data provided by Geobase and
- Lambert map image data served by Land Information Ontario,
