The Prairies Climate Change Project is a joint project between CBC Edmonton and CBC Saskatchewan that looks at weather and how our climate is changing. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga adds her expert voice to the conversation to help explain weather phenomena, climate change, and how they affect everyday life.
The North Saskatchewan River is just a flowing body of water to people who live in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. It starts at the Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park and winds its way northeast.
But there’s a lot more to it than that. On its way through the Prairies, the river is part of a larger network of streams and channels that flow into it.
A watershed is an area of land that drains into a body of water.
There are big differences in the amount and quality of water in different parts of a watershed. They are also important to ecosystems and the people and animals that live in them.
Like many other parts of our environment, watersheds are affected by what people do on the land around them, such as watering crops or building cities.
So, how healthy is the watershed in North Saskatchewan? And what does its future look like?
How do you measure the health of a watershed
The North Saskatchewan River starts in Banff National Park’s icefields and flows through Alberta and into Saskatchewan. It meets the South Saskatchewan River just south of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Together, the two rivers become the Saskatchewan River.
This river flows through the Prairies and into Manitoba, where it meets Lake Winnipeg. From there, it flows into Hudson Bay.
About 55,000 square kilometers of land are in the North Saskatchewan watershed in Alberta. Another 41,000 square kilometers are in Saskatchewan.
And, just like when you try to figure out how healthy you are, there are many factors that affect the health of the landscape.
“We can use a number of different “indicators” to measure the watershed’s health,” said Michelle Gordy, a watershed planning coordinator with the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance (NWSA).
Gordy said that the group keeps an eye on the quality and amount of groundwater, the land cover, and the effect of populated areas.
“We look at how humans are impacting the watershed. So, we can do that by building things or doing things like going on vacation, making things, farming, or anything else.”
And data shows that the health of the watershed gets worse as you get closer to the cities.
The health of the watershe
The NSWA hasn’t done a “state of the watershed” report, which looks in depth at its 12 Alberta subwatersheds, in almost 20 years.
The group plans to update its reports in 2024, looking more closely at things like groundwater, biological indicators, and how land use affects the health of the watershed.
But Gordy said that reports from the past tell us some things.
“Headwaters were good … most of the rest of [the subwatersheds] were considered fair health,” said Gordy.
Two of the watersheds — Strawberry, southwest of Edmonton, and Vermilion, closer to the Saskatchewan border — were considered to be in poor health, based on lost wetland areas, agriculture activity and land development.
“Changing the land from wetlands and grasslands to farmland had a huge effect on the health and function of this landscape,” said Gordy.
Because of these changes, the watershed is more likely to be affected by major stressors like people and climate change.
She said, “The way those two things work together makes it very, very hard for [municipalities] to be resilient.”
Climate change is likely to cause more flooding and drought in the Prairies.
Gordy said that because the landscape has been changed, the watershed will be less able to handle the new extremes that climate change will bring.
“You could have a lot of water during one part of the year, but if you can’t store it for later, you’ll have to deal with all the problems of drought when it gets really dry.”
The North Saskatchewan Basin Council says that the same effects are being felt downstream in the four subwatersheds in Saskatchewan.
It says that industrial, urban, and farming activities upstream in Alberta and along the river in Saskatchewan have hurt the watershed’s health.
Even though the Saskatchewan river is thought to be “relatively healthy,” the council said there are signs of hydrocarbons in the water and higher mercury levels in the fish.
What part Edmonton plays in the watershe
About 1.5 million people who live in or near Alberta’s capital are part of the North Saskatchewan watershed.
Even though Edmonton’s land area is small compared to the whole watershed, urban environments, like the small cities in Alberta and Saskatchewan, still have a big impact, especially on water quality and land use.
“Edmonton is a big part of the Strawberry [watershed], and there’s a lot of built-up infrastructure that changes a lot about how the watershed works and how healthy it is,” said Gordy.
In Edmonton, the watershed is managed by the utility company Epcor, which is owned by the city. Epcor works with a number of partners, including the city and the NSWA.
Steph Neufeld, a watershed manager for Epcor, said, “The water quality we’re seeing in these tributaries is about the same as what you’d expect in any urbanized area in North America.”
Neufeld said when a natural area is changed to impervious surfaces like concrete, it increases what she calls the “flashiness” of the system.
This means that water on the surface moves quickly into rivers and streams and then goes away, instead of being stored in wetlands and groundwater and moving slowly into the system.
Neufeld said, “Anything we see on the land or that washes off the land ends up in these creek environments, and we can see that in the water quality.”
She said that a good example of this is in the spring, when chloride that was put on roads over the winter gets washed into the waterways.
Improving healt
Neufeld said that a number of steps have been taken in Edmonton to take care of and improve the health of the watershed.
“We’re moving toward a green infrastructure approach,” she said, adding that such an approach starts with urban hydrology.
She said that could mean adding stormwater ponds that slowly release water to make the area look like a wetland and help keep the water quality stable.
The city is also adding more green areas and doing something called “low-impact development.” This includes things like bioretention gardens and basins, which look like garden beds but have special soils and rocks to hold and filter water before it goes into the stormwater system.
The city has also made changes to its wastewater facilities to improve the quality of the water. Neufeld says that all of these projects have helped improve the health of the North Saskatchewan River as it flows through Edmonton.
“The water quality is good, and you can play in it most of the time, especially when it hasn’t rained a lot.”
Michelle Gordy says that the steps have also been taken in the Vermilion subwatershed.
She said, “Vermilion was in such bad shape that one of our first subwatershed alliances began there.”
Municipal leaders and non-profit groups have joined forces to try to improve the health of the subwatershed as a whole. They have received a grant of $1.3 million to work with landowners on more than 40 projects to make things better on the ground.
Gordy said that could include putting up fences that keep livestock out of natural areas to give them time to grow back.
“Cattle will go into the water and damage the banks with their hooves, which affects the quality of the water. So putting up that fence lets the plants grow back.”
She said that the watershed’s future will depend on what is done to improve health and bring back wetlands.
“Over time, we’ll keep an eye on things and decide how well we’re doing. When we get new information, we’ll change our plans, and then we’ll do another “state of the watershed” report. So it’s kind of like a circle.”
Planet Earth is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of “Our Changing Planet,” a project by CBC News that shows and explains the effects of climate change. Find out what’s going on with ourClimate and Environment page.