New research in the south shore area of Lesser Slave Lake should answer some questions about the impact of logging on streams flowing out of that area. That’s the hope of Slave Lake Pulp and Alberta Plywood, the sister companies who are starting a 10-year harvesting program in the hills south of the lake this fall.
George Duffy, a graduate student and company employee, is conducting the research over the next couple of years. He’ll be doing various tests on nine small watersheds in the affected area over this spring and summer to gather baseline data. Then he’ll do the same tests next summer after a winter of logging.
Duffy explained his strategy to the Slave Lake Forest Public Advisory Committee at its Apr. 21 meeting in Slave Lake. He said such research in the boreal forest is rare, and rarer still is the extent of it.
“Slave Lake Pulp is definitely investing some money to insure it’s done properly,” he said. “With this many testing sites (18 altogether) the statistical significance goes way up.”
Duffy will be measuring such things as sediment levels, nitrogen levels and organic carbon levels in the water. He’ll also be monitoring water temperature and algae growth over the period of testing, among other indicators. His hypothesis is that there will be some changes brought on by logging in the watershed, but he doesn’t know for sure, since the studies he bases his hypotheses on are from coastal areas.
“There’s been almost no watershed studies in the boreal forest,” he says.
Some of the test sites will be on streams where no logging is planned. Those are the controls. Others will be in small watersheds where up to 75 per cent of the trees will be logged and others where a smaller percentage of harvest occurs. After a couple of seasons of testing, Duffy hopes to be able to provide his employer, the research community and the general public with solid scientific evidence showing how much or how little effect various levels of logging have on the water. His research does not, however, cover water volume or fish populations.
Duffy said Slave Lake Pulp and Alberta Plywood will not harvest more than 50 per cent of any of the four main watersheds in the south shore area – those being the Assineau River, Nine-Mile Creek, Mooney Creek and Sawridge Creek basins.
The harvest plan calls for cutblocks designed to emulate previous natural disturbance patterns (mainly fire). That means there will be fewer and larger cutblocks, resulting in about half the amount of roads and much less edge created than in the traditional two-pass, checkerboard style of harvesting.

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