On Friday, June 23, 2023, Fleming College’s Geomatics Program in the School of Environmental & Natural Resource Sciences hosted their annual GeoCommunity Open House in Lindsay.
Through this program the Baxter Creek Watershed Alliance hosted their second student mapping project with a three person team of Jordan Tishler (Project Lead), Sam Pethick (Lead Cartographer), and Kris Lebert (Lead Data Manager).
Called the “Baxter Creek Watershed Community Connections” project, the team focused on delivering a series of mapping products for engaging the local community in conservation. To see these new free and open products visit the Baxter Creek Watershed Hub at https://baxtercreekwatershed.org/baxter-creek-hub page.
The key deliverable is an online web mapping application called the “Watershed Characterization Dashboard”. This online tool provides a baseline “snapshot” of the environmental characteristics (e.g., land use, stream channel form, land cover, etc) of Baxter Creek, Squirrel Creek, and Cavan Creek subwatersheds along with detailed characteristics of Baxter Creek’s smaller tributary catchments such as Little Creek, Silver Creek, Jail Creek, and others.
This characterization data is the type of baseline data that forms the foundation for subwatershed planning. BCWA now plans to begin assessing how well habitats of these watersheds are being protected in terms of international and national standards for biodiversity conservation. In particular, BCWA wants to consider if the international goals for protecting 30% of biodiversity habitat by 2030 will be achieved locally. They also plan on leveraging current and planned land use zoning mapping provided by the Township to assess how these watersheds will change given land use planning over the course of the Growth Management Strategy.
BCWA board members recently met with staff from R.V. Anderson, the consultant working on the Master Servicing Study (MSS) for Water and Wastewater under the framework of Master Plan Approach #1 within the Municipal Class Environmental Assessment (Class EA) Process. Staff from R.V. Anderson were particularly interested in leveraging BCWA’s Watershed Characterization Dashboard to inform their study.
Also included in the Fleming deliverables was an updated Baxter Creek base reference map in downloadable and online formats, an updated thematic map series, and two volunteer-based mobile data collection tools which community volunteer “citizen scientists” can use to collect environmental data for the watershed such as breeding frogs and toads, as well as natural and cultural heritage features. If you or someone you know is interested in volunteering to help collect local environmental data, please contact BCWA via email at baxtercreekwatershed@gmail.com.
By Craig Onafrychuk
