Former Banff National Park Superintendent, Kevin van Tighem, has written a comprehensive article on the need for source water protection in the headwaters of the Saskatchewan River Basin and published it in the July edition of Alberta Views magazine.
The article reviews the pressures on watershed management from various land uses and from climate change in the context of recent research results from the Centre for Hydrology’s Marmot Creek Research Basin. It then recommends scientifically guided forest management in the headwaters to provide for greater water security.
Van Tighem attended a Biogeoscience Institute led short-course on Mountain Headwaters and Climate Change in July 2012 that included a component on Marmot Creek.
Marmot Creek Research Basin has celebrated 50+ years since its founding this year and also has sustained substantial change and loss of measurement stations as a result of the June floods . Van Tighem’s article was written before the floods and is particularly prescient on the need to protect mountain watersheds from fluvial erosion.