Each year ALMS hires field technicians to conduct LakeWatch’s water quality monitoring. Field technicians have a technical diploma or degree in environmental sciences or a related field, and receive a month of training with ALMS and Environment and Parks Environmental Monitoring and Science Division. Here is our 2020 LakeWatch team:
Ryan Turner, LakeWatch Technician
Ryan grew up in rural Alberta and has a great appreciation for our natural environments. He enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, kayaking, hunting, and fishing. Ryan graduated from MacEwan University in 2019 with a B.Sc in Biology, focusing on freshwater ecology and invertebrate zoology. He is very excited to be learning and working with ALMS and its volunteers this summer. Ryan is grateful for the opportunity to continue developing his knowledge and skills in limnology and to contribute to the stewardship of Alberta’s freshwater environments.
Kyra Ford, LakeWatch Technician
Kyra graduated from the University of Alberta in 2020 with a B.Sc. in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. Throughout her undergraduate degree she did research for the Edmonton Urban Coyote Project and she spent a semester at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre in B.C. studying marine biology. In 2019, Kyra was a summer student with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry where she monitored the water quality of small agricultural streams, and she is eager to expand her knowledge of freshwater ecosystems. She looks forward to working with our excellent team of volunteers and exploring Alberta’s lakes as a LakeWatch technician this summer.
Caleb Sinn, Program Coordinator
Caleb’s passion for freshwater ecology developed after spending many summers throughout his childhood at Gull Lake, exploring Alberta’s mountain national parks, and fishing in southern British Columbia. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 2019 with a B.Sc. double-major in Biology and Chemistry, and focused his studies specifically on community and freshwater ecology, environmental chemistry, and analytical chemistry. He also spent two years working on freshwater ecology projects ranging from mountain lake sampling to cyanobacteria monitoring and algal pigment analysis at the University of Alberta. Caleb was a LakeWatch technician in the summer of 2019, and looks forward to coordinating lake monitoring projects and public outreach across Alberta as the ALMS Program Coordinator.
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