The Canadian Southern Rockies Watershed Project Observatory; Natural Disturbance and Land Management Effects on Watersheds from "Source to Tap"

The Southern Rockies Watershed Project (SRWP) catchment observatory was established in the front-range Rocky Mountains of south-west Alberta, Canada after the 2003 Lost Creek wildfire in response to need for information on potential impacts of increasing climate associated natural disturbances from wildfire on water resources in this key water supply region. Since its inception 16 years ago, the watershed research observatory has grown to include a network of 21 distributed climate, and 29 nested hydrometric/water quality monitoring stations to provide key data on climate and coupled streamflow-geochemical-ecological responses to 2 major wildfires in the region. This enabled laddering catchment infrastructure and long-term coupled parameter watershed calibration for studies on both historic forest harvesting and a paired-catchment study of 3 alternative contemporary forest management strategies. Building on historic insights from previous long-term watershed studies enabled new comparative insights on forest land management strategies with those of climate associated pressures (wildfires) on water resources.

An important, but challenging potential of long-term catchment studies is to provide the foundation of observations of hydrological, water quality, and ecological responses to contemporary climate and disturbance pressures needed to inform water management, mitigation, or adaptation strategies across diverse science, engineering, and economic-policy domains. A particularly unique feature of the long term SRWP research enabled by this observatory and commitment of a diverse research team is the transdisciplinary research linking field-based (plot, hillslope, and catchment scale) observations of hydrologic, biogeochemical, and aquatic ecosystem responses to headwaters land disturbance to larger downstream river basin processes, implications for key human water uses - drinking water, and economic implications. The nested watershed study approach spanning small (~ 1 km²) sub-catchments to larger regional basin scales (>200 km²) has enabled characterizing downstream cumulative watershed effects and impacts to society of both upstream land management and severe natural disturbances which has historically not been a component of longer-term watershed research platforms.