2024 ALMS Conference Recap
Events and Friday Read | water management | October 2024
Ashley Johnson, Education and Outreach Coordinator
Every year the Alberta Lake Management Society (ALMS) hosts an annual conference focused on lake and water management. In past years the conference has been held in St. Albert and Sylvan Lake, often in collaboration with partners such as the local Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils. This year the AWC is celebrating 15 years of working across the Athabasca watershed, and we decided it would be a great opportunity to partner with ALMS to host the conference in our watershed.
After many planning sessions, and lots of work put in by the organizing committee (including Bradley Peter, Rosemarie Ferejuc, Melissa Logan, and Petra Rowell) we landed on hosting the conference in Hinton on September 18th and 19th.
Since many of our conference attendees were going to have to drive in the night before, we hosted a campfire at Gregg Lake on the evening of the 17th, with optional canoe paddling.
Elder Joe Cardinal opened the conference for us. He currently lives in the Hinton area, and I met him at a land & plant medicine walk in the Tawatinaw watershed. From there, Bradley Peter gave some updates from ALMS including information on some of their ongoing monitoring programs.
Government of Alberta staff delivered a presentation on Monitoring, Evaluating and Reporting (MER) plans. The topic may sound a little dry, but everyone in the room understood the importance of collecting relevant and meaningful data to understand how best to manage our lakes. The previous MER plan covered 2019-2024 (the lotic plan available here), and the presentation touched on it, including information on some of the government’s core lake monitoring programs for long-term monitoring, sentinel lakes where a whole ecosystem monitoring approach is used, and information on their QA/QC (quality assurance and quality control) protocols. The presentation concluded with a sneak peek at what the GoA has planned for 2025-30. Information on water indicators is available here. A review of Alberta’s MER plan for lotic systems is available here.
Margaret Schultz with the Northern Rockies Museum, located in Hinton, delivered a great presentation on the history of some of the lakes in the area. Conference attendees got to learn why local lakes like Gregg and Jarvis got those names, as well as some of the history that provides context. If you’re ever passing through Hinton, consider stopping in for a visit! They’ve got lots of great informative exhibits (and a giftshop too!), located in Hinton’s original Railway Station House.
Claire Allore with fRI research delivered a presentation on a collaborative approach to modeling stream temperature along Alberta’s Eastern Slopes. She reviewed the importance of water temperature for fish health, influences on water temperature, and why it is important for fisheries management. fRI and collaborators have data loggers across the Eastern Slopes, and are working to fill data gaps, create temperature models and use them to assess fish species at risk. The goal is to create something similar to NorWeST Stream Temp, a stream temperature database compiled through collaboration.
Dr. Glynnis Hood delivered a talk titled “Fitting Fur into the Freshwater Puzzle”, which was all about semi-aquatic mammals. This ties in with her book on the subject. Highlights included learning how long a beaver can hold its breath, and some of the adaptations of these mammals to living in and around water.
Dr. David Barrett facilitated a session focused on “Bridging the Management-Research Gap: Identifying Key Lake Research Questions”. Participants went through the process of creating research questions, with the aim of connecting researchers and lake managers for projects that will benefit both parties.
Lisa Steciuk with Mountain Métis delivered a presentation on watershed research. The community was able to complete water quality monitoring to determine sources of pollutants, as well as using drone footage to further understand what was happening on the landscape (to great success).
Brett Campbell with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute delivered an update on an ongoing algal bloom monitoring program in Alberta lakes. The project consists of tracking cyanobacterial and algal blooms from space; it requires taking water samples on the same day as the satellite passes overhead. While it sounds simple, it is logistically challenging because the sky has to be free of clouds when the satellite passes overhead. An overview of the program is available here. A web application with the 6 pilot lakes will hopefully be available in 2025.
Following the day’s talks, conference attendees had the option of attending a banquet dinner. The AWC took over for the banquet, with a welcome from board treasurer Ida Edwards, and dinner followed by a presentation celebrating 15 years of working for the Athabasca watershed. Rather than cover a list of achievements or a timeline of the last 15 years, Petra decided to focus on 15 things the Athabasca Watershed Council has been (and will continue to be) grateful for. From there, and following a few glasses of wine, we all strolled over to the PATH, Hinton’s local theatre.
Dr. Rolf Vinebrooke gave a talk on Alberta’s Alpine Lake Ecosystems as a precursor to a short film. His presentation looked at the community ecology of fishless alpine lakes, and he discussed research on rehabilitating stocked alpine lakes to their natural fishless state. He set the scene for the film Losing Blue, which is about losing the blue of our alpine lakes due to climate change.
The following morning started with field tours, which are usually done in the afternoon but had to be changed due to the school buses being in use. We had two field tours, with the first one being a tour of parts of the Vista Coal Mine, located just on the edge of Hinton. It was fascinating to see the scale of the operation, as well as some of the reclamation work that has already begun.
We then went to my favourite place in Hinton, the Beaver Boardwalk. Members of the local Whiskey Jack club showed us around, and while we didn’t see any beavers (that time), we did see some birds, including a very bold Canada goose.
Heading back to the venue for the last set of talks, we heard from Cheryl Tebby with the ABMI about chironomid diversity at Pigeon Lake. Chironomids have an aquatic larval stage, but when they hatch, they’re usually known as midges, fish flies or muffleflies. They hatch en mass for safety reasons, which can result in clouds of flies that can be considered a nuisance. They spark questions for lake goers like ‘what are these?’. Cheryl’s work has helped us understand the different types of chironomids in Pigeon Lake, with a species table coming soon.
Ken Quackenbush was up next. He’s part of the fairly new Beaver Hills Watershed Stewardship Society (BHWSS). The Beaver Hills is a sub-watershed of the North Saskatchewan, to the east of Edmonton, including Elk Island National Park and several lakes. The initial focus of the group is on the 4 major lakes in Strathcona County, including Cooking Lake. Eventually they plan to work towards larger action within the watershed. Currently their primary goals include promoting watershed stewardship, advocating for policy improvements, collaborating on projects and conducting research (through community-based citizen science).
Dave Trew with the Mayatan Lake Management Association delivered a presentation on the lakes of the carvel pitted delta. These lakes are unique, with many being very clear and low in nutrients (unlike many of our Alberta lakes), with some having unique water chemistry. Reports on these lakes are available here. They’ve also produced a drone video showcasing the lakes, available on the project page.
Our very own Sarah Shortt delivered a presentation on the AWC’s Healthy Shorelines Initiative. Learn about the initiative here, and the Tawatinaw Watershed Working Group here.
The last presentation was by Kallum McDonald, all about invasive curly leaf pondweed. They found the pondweed in the South Saskatchewan River, as well as retroactively finding it through two unreported sightings on iNaturalist. After discussion with others in the invasive plant community, they found an historical record of curly leaf pondweed in the Elbow River in 1944. The implication is that it may have been present but under the radar for the past 80 years. It is the first fully aquatic invasive plant that has been reported in Alberta; identifying aquatic plants can be challenging, and there is a lack of aquatic vegetation monitoring, awareness and reporting. Aquatic invasive species sightings can be reported through the AIS hotline at 1-855-336-2628, by emailing a photo to epa.ais@gov.ab.ca or on EDDMapS Alberta.