How the health of a river is influenced by what's happening on land

The Prairies Climate Change Project is a joint initiative between CBC Edmonton and CBC Saskatchewan that focuses on weather and our changing climate. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga brings her expert voice to the conversation to help explain weather phenomena and climate change and how they impact everyday life.

For residents of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the North Saskatchewan River is nothing more than a flowing body of water that starts at the Saskatchewan Glacier in Banff National Park and winds its way northeast. 

But it's much more than that. The river is a part of a bigger network of streams and channels that feed into it on its path through the Prairies. 

We're talking about a watershed — an area of land that drains into a water body. 

Watersheds are complicated, with big differences between regions on the quality and quantity of water. They are also critical to ecosystems and their animal and human populations.

Like many aspects of our environment, watersheds are vulnerable to human activity — from irrigating crops to building cities —that impacts how the land around it is being used.

So how healthy is the North Saskatchewan watershed? And what does its future look like?

The North Saskatchewan River begins in the icefields of Banff National Park and continues across Alberta and into Saskatchewan. Just downstream of Prince Albert, Sask., it joins the South Saskatchewan River, and the two become the Saskatchewan River.

That river continues into Manitoba on its path through the Prairies, meeting Lake Winnipeg and eventually draining into Hudson Bay.

In Alberta, the North Saskatchewan watershed includes around 55,000 square kilometres of land; there's another 41,000 in Saskatchewan.

And just like trying to gauge your own health, the well-being of the landscape is affected by many variables.

"There's a number of different indicators, as we would call them, that we can use to measure the health of the watershed," said Michelle Gordy, a watershed planning co-ordinator with the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance (NWSA).

The organization monitors the quality and quantity of groundwater, land cover and the impact of populated areas, Gordy said.

"We look at how humans are impacting the watershed. So whether that's through development or things that we do, like recreation, industry, agriculture, you name it."