Produced by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI)
The Clean Water Prioritization Tool (CWPT) has been developed to provide practical guidance to interested stakeholders in maintaining and enhancing surface water quality throughout their area of interest (e.g. a rural municipality, a watershed, or a land-use planning region).
To do this, the CWPT utilizes hydrological modeling from ABMI's Ecosystem Services Assessment Project to identify areas of the landscape that contribute to nutrient and sediment runoff, as well as pinpoint important areas for removing these potential pollutants. This data is then distilled into a decision support tool that presents user-relevant information at a quarter-section scale. Landowners, resource managers, and extension agents can use the CWPT to determine the relative importance of each quarter-section in contributing to the provision of clean surface water, as well as receive guidance on management actions appropriate to that particular quarter.
- Motivations and background
- Technical documentation
Fundamentally, the CWPT is designed to provide decision support around the following questions:
- Where do I target my efforts (i.e. conservation dollars, extension work) to improve surface water quality in my region?
- Which management actions are appropriate once I get there?
The CWPT is made up of two components that address the above questions in tandem: a Landscape Position Importance Score and a On-Pixel Contribution Score. The first allows a user to zero in on quarter sections within a region that, due to their position on the landscape, will likely provide the largest impact in terms of water quality improvements (or currently contribute the most to maintenance of water quality). The second component can provide guidance as to which suite of management actions are appropriate to that area.
Clicking on an area of interest (AOI) from those offered below will take the user to a page with the CWPT customized to that region. This page will include a more in-depth explainer of the tool components, a suggested workflow, as well as AOI-specific quarter section level results.
- In both interactive maps, satellite imagery can be displayed by selecting the 'Imagery' tab in the top-right corner.
- In the second interactive map, two filter sliders are provided to allow for custom queries and map visualization.
- Raw data can be downloaded directly (.csv, .xlsx formats) using the 'Download data' button on the bottom table.
- Northern Sunrise County
- Lac Ste. Anne
- Parkland
- Leduc
- Wetaskiwin
- Lacombe
- Vermilion River
- Flagstaff
- Red Deer
- Mountain View
- Rocky View
- Wheatland
- Vulcan
- Camrose
- Ponoka
- Grande Prairie
- Barrhead
- Westlock
- Strathcona
- Sturgeon
- North Saskatchewan
- Red Deer
- South Saskatchewan
- North Saskatchewan
- Red Deer
- South Saskatchewan
- Bear Lake
The Clean Water Prioritization Tool (CWPT) is licensed under MIT license © 2019 Marcus Becker, ABMI.
Have questions on how to use the CWPT? Features you would like to see added? A different area of interest?
Contact:
Marcus Becker
[email protected]
(780) 492-6322
Funding and support for this work was provided by Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions (AI BIO) through the Ecosystem Services Assessment Project.