SLWSS Comments for the Public Hearing on the Amendment of the Birchcliff Land Use Bylaw #199/17

The Summer Village of Birchcliff has invited public comment on its review of several clauses of its land use bylaw that control the size of structures and impermeable surfaces on private property. The SLWSS provided the following  recommendations on the specific and more general aspects of land use regulation on October 13: COMMENTS ON BIRCHCLIFF …

The Biodiversity Monitoring Institute Reports on Alberta

The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) has released a series of reports that can be used to observe changes in land use and environmental variables. See these web pages: Land Cover Human Footprint Map Species Some  of the map products will be useful for monitoring of the Sylvan Lake watershed, however the resolution is too …

Juno Beach Comes to Sylvan Lake

The shoreline of Sylvan Lake is changing as McMansions replace those old time family summer cottages. Architectural, environmental and aesthetic standards seem to be flexible. Living by Water principles that help property owners manage water balance and preserve the riparian zone with recommended low impact development and landscaping standards in some cases have apparently been …

Worms Are People Too

Worms should be honorary people. Why? Because they work harder and contribute more to the environment and food supply than many real people do. How do we know that? Because wormologists who study them have the facts to back up that claim. This scientific article published in the Chemical and Engineering News, a weekly magazine of the …

Golf Course Creek Meets Sylvan Lake-2016-07-16

A few millimetres of rain in the last week: Precipitation in 2016 measured at the Alberta Agriculture weather station at Hespero. has increased the stormwater runoff from the Golf Course Creek catchment and transported another load of suspended solids into Sylvan Lake through Marina Bay: View of the turbidity of Golf Course Creek on the …

Do-It-Yourself GIS for Your Watershed

Learn how to build a Geographic Information System for your Alberta watershed by using this starter kit from the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society. The process involves downloading free software, acquiring georeferenced data for your land and lake area, and creating maps that will help you to understand and make better decisions about your watershed. Click on the AltaLIS …

Blayne West Leaves Lacombe County for Australia

Blayne West, environmental coordinator for Lacombe County and member of the board of directors of the Sylvan Lake Watershed Stewardship Society, will depart from Canada with her family and return to Australia where summer never ends. Blayne helped to develop and manage Lacombe County's environmental policy and practices and contributed to the Cumulative Effects Management System (CEMS) …

The Sylvan Lake Watershed Report

The Sylvan Lake Report - Second Edition is our brand new Society handbook on the lake and watershed. See the Table of Contents here. The report presents critical cumulative information on the state of our watershed. It summarizes historical data on the lake and its watershed land compiled from a variety of public sources and makes …

The Sylvan Lake Groundwater Project

It's still just a $1.5 million proposal, but it's been submitted, and the groundwater modeling teams at the Alberta Geological Survey (AGS) and the top-gun Dutch groundwater consultancy Deltares are hoping that funding will be provided by the Alberta Innovates-Energy and Environment Solutions program in the competition category of Water Technology. Applications must be filed by …

Keep Nutrients on the Land……..Not in the Lake

Alberta Agriculture and Forestry (AB Ag) research on nutrient transport has evolved over two decades is relevant to the situation in the Sylvan Lake watershed. About 67% of the land area within the watershed boundary is used for agriculture. Those uses are also diffuse sources of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) nutrients as a result of the cycle of growth …