SCI-COM 2021:
WINDSOR WATERSHEDS
by Shayenna Nolan
This series of creative works featuring original photography, videography, animation, and graphic design was created with the goal of empowering Windsor-Essex residents to understand the issues facing our watersheds today. Designed for social media, the series will be posted on our HHL channels throughout the month for community members to engage with.
1: THE DIVERSITY OF KNOWLEDGE
Successful freshwater restoration has to be inclusive of people — and so we acknowledge the many diverse ways of knowing our world.
2: MEET YOUR NEIGHBOURS
Streams are all around us, so we thought that we might introduce you to your neighbours! Each species can be found in Windsor-Essex.
3: WHAT IS A WATERSHED?
Watersheds are areas of land where all the water that falls will drain to a common body of water. Landscape elevation determines how watersheds are defined, because water will flow downhill and collect in areas of lower elevation.
4: THROUGH WATER WE ARE ALL CONNECTED
As water moves through the landscape, it washes over everything. Water will evolve chemically as bits of the watershed become dissolved in it — pollutants, organic matter, genetic material, nutrients, and more. And so through water - we are all connected.
5: WATERSHED TEA
Once water has washed over the landscape, the resulting solution is one of the most chemically complex mixtures on earth.
“Watershed tea — a cold brew extract of terrestrial organic matter!”
Henry David Thoreau
This animation was made as a loop, to reflect the continuity of the water cycle.
6: WINDSOR WATERSHEDS
We are all part of a watershed. Which watershed do you live in?
See the full map here: tinyurl.com/j5ca2k5c
The four watersheds depicted are part of an ongoing biomonitoring project, cut out from satellite imagery. Included with each cutout is a description of the remaining natural land cover (ERCA, 2015).
7: WINDSOR-ESSEX BY THE NUMBERS
What are we restoring to?
To answer that question, we must first understand what came before, and what was lost. In Windsor-Essex County almost all has been lost, which is why restoration and conservation efforts are so incredibly important.
8: WHAT WE DO TO THE EARTH, WE DO TO OURSELVES
The negative impacts of habitat loss and degradation aren’t just limited to the environment. Ultimately, we are the ones that suffer.
9: WATERSHED REPORT CARDS
Our watersheds have some of the worst water quality scores in the province. Watershed report cards are made by local conservation authorities, and scores are based on chemical water quality parameters as well as biotic indices. Benthic invertebrates (remember your crane fly larvae neighbour?) are sensitive to environmental pollutants, so if we find species that need good water conditions to survive, the score will be better! Unfortunately in Windsor-Essex this is not usually the case, and we typically will only find species that can survive harsh environmental conditions.
The watersheds surrounding the GTA are shown in the second slide for context — the largest urban metropolitan area in Ontario has better scores than us!
10: MAJOR WATERSHED ISSUES
Why does our region have such low scores on our watershed report card? Major environmental issues such as habitat loss, nutrient overload, pollution, and extreme run-off events are symptoms of a society that does not take watershed health seriously.
11: WHAT DOES THE EARTH ASK OF US?
With knowledge comes responsibility. Think about our ways of knowing.. when you walk around your neighbourhood, if you look a little closer, what do you learn? Looking at our watershed scores, learning about major environmental issues, what can we do to help?
What does the earth ask of us?
12: THE STAGES OF RESTORATION
Much of the inspiration for this work comes from Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, an indigenous plant ecologist at the State University of New York. Restoration isn’t just the science that we use to ‘diagnose’ a problem. It also doesn’t end when we take back land for natural spaces, or when we plant some trees and call it a day. Restoration isn’t complete until we heal the function of the land, our relationships to it, and ourselves in the process.
13: TIME TO DEGRADE, TIME TO RESTORE
Restoration targets are often set for a small amount of time — for example the UN decade of restoration and what they hope to achieve in only 10 years. However, it took even longer for our environment to degrade. We’re looking at timescales of 100+ years! To put this into perspective, here’s an example of how one of our example watersheds (Turkey Creek) changed in only 63 years. It’s interesting to see that much of the area was farmed before being turned to urban spaces, and the landscape looks almost unrecognizable from 1954-2000.
The main roads running through this gif (Huron Church, Highway 3, and the 401) were transformed into the Herb Gray Parkway, which was completed in 2015. From 2000-2017, you can see how how the houses demolished in the forested area have slowly regrown. Restoration and the regrowth of ecosystems is not a quick process.
Archived historical journals date the first farming settlements from the French colonization of this region to around 1747, which would mean it took 274 years to reach this point. We aren’t just doing this for ourselves, but the actions we take today are to improve the lives of our descendants and all future generations that will reside here.
(Photos are aerial images from ERCA’s public mapping database)
14: STREAMS OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
In order to restore stream form and function (the first two stages of our restoration cycle), we have to understand the system we’re working with. Streams of the Anthropocene is a mini-documentary following the undergraduate thesis project of Shayenna Nolan as she conducts biomonitoring surveys on 7 local streams.
16: WHAT CAN YOU DO?
When dealing with large-scale societal and environmental problems, it’s easy to feel like there’s nothing everyday people like us can do to help out. This isn’t entirely true! Have you ever heard about the 1% rule and how the theory of marginal gains led the British cycling team to gold? The same thing is true for our ecosystems!
Every little action makes a difference. All of us matter. And we are all part of the solution.
17: WE HAVE HOPE AND SO SHOULD YOU
A message from conservation expert Dr. Christina Semeniuk on why she has hope.
Thank you for taking the time to make it through my project.
If you take anything away from this — learn to love and respect the places that you call home, and remember that we are all in this together.
Miigwech.
— Shayenna Nolan (Biidaaban Kwe)