In September 2013, ALMS published the Workbook for Developing Lake Management Plans in Alberta. The purpose of this document is to guide lake stewardship groups and lake managers who have tackled the task of developing management plans for their basin. The document is aligned with existing and new Provincial policies, Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils, and current legislation. It was created to act as a lake-specific companion document to the Guide to Watershed Management Planning in Alberta, which was produced by Alberta Environment & Parks and finalized in 2015.
The flowchart below is from page 19 of the Workbook, and shows the six stages of the watershed management process. The process has been broken down into 16 detailed steps, which are summarized in pop-up windows when each arrow is clicked. All of the steps are in the ALMS Workbook in full detail, and this page acts as an interactive way to display a quick overview of this process. Also included in the ALMS Workbook are a number of Case Studies from lakes in Alberta that are undergoing lake management processes. An interactive map displaying the case studies is located here.
How to navigate this page: Clicking on one of the arrows below will open a pop-up window. These may not appear if pop-ups are disabled in your web browser. Once a pop-up is open, you can close it by clicking outside of the pop-up window, or by clicking the small exit text in the top right corner of the pop-up window. Links within each pop-up should open any linked web pages or documents in a new window.
Please note: As of now, the interactive pop-ups don’t work well on mobile devices. Sorry for any inconvenience! You can still view the full workbook PDF here.
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.
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.
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.
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 
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.
There is no limit to the number or types of lake management actions, but they typically fall into the categories on the right.
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).
Helpful resources