There are several dozen small kettle lakes located on the post glacial landscape of Parkland County known as the Carvel Pitted Delta. There are approximately 25 named and 70 unnamed lakes in this area. These small lakes and their associated landscapes are considered to have unique ecological value by local and provincial governments, as well as conservation agencies.
Beginning in 2020, a partnership between ALMS and the University of Alberta launched a preliminary project to gather water quality information on the lakes in the Carvel Pitted Delta. Twelve lake basins were sampled during the summer.
During the summer of 2021, ALMS and the Mayatan Lake Management Association (MLMA) successfully delivered an expanded, community-based water quality survey program for an additional forty-four of these small lakes. This survey was a collaborative effort supported by several partners, including ALMS, MLMA, the Land Stewardship Centre of Canada (LSCC), the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance (NSWA), the Stony Plain Fish and Game Association (SPFGA), and the Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Alberta.
In 2022, a third-community based water quality survey project was implemented by ALMS and the MLMA. Fifty lakes were sampled this summer, extending the regional overview of lake water quality within the Carvel Pitted Delta. Lake bathymetry, isotope collection, microcystin collection, aquatic invasive species sampling, and light extinction measurements were also added to the scope of work in 2022, in addition to gathering lake water quality data as in past years. The 2022 survey was a collaborative effort supported by several partners, including ALMS, MLMA, LSCC, NSWA, SPFGA, the Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Alberta, as well as thirty-one private landowners that graciously provided access to lakes that were located on their properties.
View the 2022 summary report of the Lakes of the Carvel Pitted Delta, here.
View the 2021 summary report here.
View a photo slideshow of Lakes of the Carvel Pitted Delta, here.
View a presentation on the project by David Trew from January 2022, here.
View original research on lakes of the Carvel Pitted Delta by Konstantin von Gunten et. al. (2022) on Natural Controls on Phosphorus Concentrations in Small Lakes in Central Alberta, Canada.
The members of the steering committee will continue to play a strong role in facilitating and tracking implementation actions. This includes any actions they were responsible for, as well as tracking other committees and sector’s actions and progress made towards achieving the plan’s outcomes. Ongoing communication is essential to successful implementation and achieving outcomes, therefore a regular reporting mechanism could be set up in order to provide regular evaluation of the plan.
Reporting is an essential component of any watershed management planning and implementation process. There are two main types of reporting that should be shared with stakeholders on a regular basis: implementation reporting & effectiveness reporting.
There is no limit to the number or types of lake management actions, but they typically fall into the categories on the right.
Helpful resources
The development of a lake watershed management plan provides the guidance needed to implement activities, but the plan cannot be static. Monitoring the performance of your management actions is essential to understanding whether your goals have been met, and whether further actions are needed. Monitoring and evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of a lake watershed management plan allows assessment of progress towards the goals and objectives of the plan, identification of problems and opportunities, and a collection of critical information required when performing a 5 or 10 year review of the plan.
What has the monitoring results of the plan and of the indicators shown? Is there a need to modify the plan? It is important that the lake watershed management plan does not just sit on a shelf. Information gaps should be addressed, action items need to be managed, completed, and evaluated to best address the needs of the lake. Always keep in mind the vision: if the actions taken are not bringing the lake closer to that vision, then the plan needs to be modified. Consider updating both the state of the watershed and the lake watershed management plans at regular intervals to make sure that the actions taken were achieving the desired outcomes and to evaluate what work still needs to be done.
Once a plan has been approved by all affected sectors and officially endorsed and released by the steering committee, then implementation can begin in full. Action projects can be large and comprehensive, or made smaller by staging projects over time or into modules that can be tackled one at a time. Fundraising is an issue that many community groups may find intimidating, but experience with programs such as the Pine Lake Restoration Program (see 
This graphic describes how the various committees and groups will work and interact together. The circle size depicts the approximate number of people involved, and the circles overlapping indicates that some individuals may reside in all of the circles and participate in multiple committees as part of the planning process. The technical committee is shown as an arrow, indicating that it is independent and has relatively few people, and yet it interacts with all of the groups. This graphic may look different depending on the lake and the people involved, and a detailed structure should be agreed upon and described in the plan’s Terms of Reference (Step 6).
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