Riparian Restoration and the 1- Month Challenge with Lakeland College Students
In November of 2022, the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance teamed up with Lakeland College for the Riparian Web Portal 1-Month Challenge. Students in Professor Nicole Nadorozny’s Environmental Sciences, Aquatic Habitat Restoration course were paired up with NSWA’s partners in the conservation community to upload projects to the Riparian Web Portal.
What are Riparian Areas?
Riparian areas are the ribbons of green surrounding water bodies, comprising the transition zone between the aquatic and terrestrial. The trees, shrubs, and plants in riparian areas are water-loving and form a unique buffer zone, influencing the functionality and health of rivers, lakes, and streams. The benefits they provide are vast and essential, including erosion reduction, aquifer recharge, filtration, and habitat creation.
The Riparian Web Portal
We know riparian areas are an intrinsically valuable element of our watershed, and essential for safe, secure, drinking water. They are also at threat across our province, with human land-use changes reducing their overall intactness and functionality. NSWA’s Riparian Health Action Plan helps municipalities, non-profits, and industry experts collaborate to better manage riparian areas across the province. And luckily, our province is full of people and organizations with big ideas to improve the health of our natural ecosystems and watersheds!
The Riparian Web Portal showcases projects like these, big and small across the province. It also hosts valuable data on riparian health and intactness for all of Alberta’s watersheds. Peruse the portal today and discover whether your local water body’s shoreline is green, yellow, or red, and what this means for watershed health.
Why Showcase Projects?
Projects on the Ground include shoreline restoration projects, erosion control initiatives, educational demonstration sites, and agricultural projects, such as adaptive grazing and cattle exclusion. NSWA’s role as a watershed convenor means we bring people together, as problem-solving is much easier with a team, especially at the watershed level. The web portal’s projects not only celebrate success stories, and demonstrate the process for others, but also inspire the organization of future projects. Some of the portal’s projects are wide-scale and spearheaded by big teams, while others are grassroots, and started at a community level, or by a landowner wanting to restore a wetland on their property.
The Challenge
To start off the challenge, NSWA hosted a virtual Riparian 102 training session with the 14 Environmental Sciences students who took part in the challenge. During the session, the students learned about the value of riparian areas, and how to analyze the riparian health data available on the portal, including the field-based tools used for health assessments. The students then got a chance to test the portal out for themselves and learned how to upload new ‘Projects on the Ground.’
NSWA then reached out to our partners in the conservation community who are currently using the web portal to showcase their own projects, and they were each paired with a student. We are very grateful to those who volunteered, including partners from the Mighty Peace Watershed Alliance, ALUS Vermilion County, and the Wizard Lake Watershed & Lake Stewardship Association.
The challenge officially kicked off in November and students were tasked with reaching out to their coordinator and setting up interviews to learn about their mentor’s project and collect the necessary information to upload their project into the portal! This includes the project’s timeline, people involved, restoration tools used, and before-and-after photos. Through this element of the challenge, the students learned to set tasks, plan a work schedule, and network with partners in the conservation community.
Once the students had uploaded their projects, NSWA teamed up with Professor Nadorozny to review their work and pick 4 lucky winners. We’re pleased to announce that students, Katlelyn Aschenmeier and Tyler Hermansen, and coordinators from the Red Deer River Watershed Alliance and the Wetaskiwin Leduc ALUS chapter were our challenge winners! They were awarded with solar power banks, which the NSWA team hopes will be a helpful tool during future field trips as the students begin their careers in the environmental sector!
Reflections
In today’s information age, we’re confronted with near-constant updates and news on the gloomy reality of the state of our planet’s ecological health. But we rarely hear about the positive stories, and the inspiring efforts being made to both conserve and restore our precious ecosystems. The Riparian Web Portal provides important data on riparian health, demonstrating where we need to put more effort, but also showcasing stories of resilience.
The Portal is easy to navigate and connects people to projects happening in their own local watershed. As the portal does not only showcase the project’s outcome, but also the overall process and timeline, others can learn from these projects and maybe be inspired to get the ball rolling on an opportunity for their own riparian area!
The challenge was a great opportunity to get more of our partner’s projects uploaded into the portal while inspiring the next generation of young environmentalists! A big thank you to Nicole Nadorozny, her environmental science class, and all of the coordinators for helping make this happen.