NSWA Watershed Wednesday Webinars- Monitoring freshwater ecosystems

Speaker 1: Benjamin Kissinger, Program Lead, fRI Research Water & Fish Program

A collaborative approach to modeling stream temperature along Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, fRI Research

The fRI Research Water and Fish Program has taken on the lead role in collating existing water temperature data for the province of Alberta.

For cold water species like native salmonids, temperature plays a critical role in available habitat to complete life cycles. In Alberta, three salmonid species are federally listed as species at risk: Athabasca Rainbow Trout, Bull Trout, and Westslope Cutthroat Trout. The threat of warming waters through riparian habitat loss, climate change, and water use influences the available habitat for these cold-water species. To better quantify available cold-water habitat for these species we have taken on the modeling of stream temperatures using spatial stream network models for Alberta’s Eastern Slopes region. The outputs from this work will aid in selection of locations for species recovery efforts, identifying critical cold-water habitat, and better understanding the watershed’s thermal sensitivity to climate and landscape change. To determine differences in temperature and potential risks among watersheds fRI is collaborating with partners to collect and model temperature along the Eastern Slopes of Alberta.

Dr. Kissinger is the Water and Fish Program Lead at fRI Research and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. His research focuses on applied research questions that aim to improve the way people work in and around aquatic habitats. His main interests are water temperature, fish genetics, and population dynamics related to native trout recovery.

Speaker 2: Dr. Hughie Jones, Lead Research Scientist – Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation & Wakâ Mne Science & Culture Initiative

For decades Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation (ANSN) and its approximately 2200 members, located in Treaty Six Territory, have lived without access to safe, clean, and locally sourced drinking water. Their local water supply Wakâ Mne (God’s Lake), also known as Lac Ste. Anne, AB, has experienced accelerated water quality decline as the pressures of climate change, industrial agriculture, mining, forestry, urbanization, illegal dumping, and recreation remain unrelenting.

ANSN community member and soil scientist, Dr. Hughie Jones founded the initiative after identifying a lack of capacity within his community to monitor environmental processes, climate, and environmental pollutants from industrial sources. In early 2019, Dr. Jones secured multi-year funding through the Indigenous Community Climate Based Monitoring Program, to focus on: environmental monitoring and the documentation of traditional knowledge held by ANSN elders and knowledge holders to empower Indigenous culture to inform future strategies aimed at adaptation and mitigation.