Watersheds

            You may not have known it, but you live in a watershed. While you may not know the name of the watershed you live in, healthy watersheds are vital to our community. A watershed is an area of land that acts as a collection bank for millions of gallons of water accumulated from rainfall and spring run off from surrounding land.

Residents of Wadena and surrounding area are part of the Quill Lakes Watershed, one of the 29 watersheds and 10 major basins found in Saskatchewan .  Instead of flowing into a river headed for Hudson Bay water flows over ground and under ground towards the Quill Lakes where it stays. This makes the Quill Lakes watershed a terminal one, meaning all the rain that falls, all the snow that melts, and all the streams that flow eventually end up in Big Quill Lake . The amount of water that reaches the lakes however varies from year to year and depends on many interacting factors in the watershed such as annual cropping practices, the amount of grassland cover (which traps and slows runoff), wetland drainage, spring run off, and annual precipitation.

The Quill Lakes watershed covers an area 110 kilometers wide by 140 kilometers long.  The height of land north of the Foam Lake Marsh and Fishing Lake creates the boundary of the Assiniboine Watershed of which Fishing Lake is a part of.  Watersheds help us understand that what affects a specific part of a watershed can affect the entire watershed. As the water travels within the watershed it is exposed to different landscapes and to human induced changes, picking up minerals, sediments, chemicals and other pollutants along the way. When water flow is increased or decreased by humans, the environment, or wildlife, this affects soil erosion, water levels, and water quality.

When the healthy cycle of watersheds are interrupted by extreme precipitation, and /or human and animal induced changes, we are all affected in one way or another.  To learn more about watersheds or watershed management please visit the Saskatchewan Watershed authority website http://www.swa.ca.  To discover more about our local watersheds please visit the Wynyard Interpretive center, the Wadena Museum and Nature Centre or the Foam Lake Heritage Marsh.