Crystal Kersey, MSc Physical Geography, Project Assistant for the Adaptation and Resilience Training Program (ART) at The Athabasca Watershed Council
The Athabasca River watershed is immense, spanning nearly a quarter of Alberta and a small portion of Saskatchewan (Smithwick, 2012). Despite covering only a small fraction of this vast watershed, the mountain headwaters play a disproportionately large role in sustaining the river. The river’s journey is complex, with intricate interactions between groundwater, rivers, lakes, snow, and glaciers that connect both above and below ground.
Rivers, much like trees, are integrated yet diverse systems. The main stem acts as the trunk, transporting water and nutrients and connecting the entire network. However, it is the branches and leaves—comparable to tributaries and streams—that collect the essential resources needed for the system to thrive. Tributary rivers, creeks, and glaciers all contribute vital water, habitat, and nutrients, sustaining the river as a whole. Within this framework, mountain headwaters serve as the crown of the tree.
The Athabasca River headwaters encompass some of Alberta’s most iconic landscapes. Located upstream of Hinton, Alberta, these headwaters consist of nine smaller tributaries and countless creeks. This area represents just 7% of the watershed yet contributes nearly a third of the river’s annual flow at Fort McMurray (Newton & Taube, 2023). Even this remarkable statistic understates the headwaters’ importance, as it accounts only for surface flow and not for groundwater. Expressed groundwater accounts for almost all winter flow and contributes 46% of annual flow (Hwang et al., 2023). Mountain headwaters recharge groundwater, which resurfaces downstream to sustain river flow (Campbell & Ryan, 2021).
Photos from top to bottom: Maligne Lake in winter, Maligne Canyon, Athabasca Glacier. Photos from Crystal Kersey, Hendrik Cornelissen on Unsplash and Crystal Kersey, respectively.
The headwaters’ outsized contribution arises from multiple factors: the mountains receive significantly higher precipitation, experience less evapotranspiration, and benefit from glacier melt. Together, these elements make the mountain headwaters indispensable to the Athabasca River’s vitality and health. Though glacier melt is a relatively small portion of annual flow, meltwater contributes most in warm, dry years when water is most scarce (Bash and Marshall, 2016).
To explore a map of the sub-basins, glaciers and monitoring stations of the Athabasca Headwaters see: Map of the Upper Athabasca Watershed.
Tracing the Athabasca River to Its Glacial Origins
The Continental Divide, the icy spine of the Rocky Mountains, channels water on the west side of the mountains toward the Pacific Ocean and water on the east side to the Atlantic Ocean or the Arctic Ocean. The Athabasca River originates at the Continental Divide, where the mountains capture moist air drifting in from the west. Hydrologic boundaries not only define water flow but also serve as a park boundary, with Jasper National Park’s western edge marked by the Continental Divide and its southwestern boundary separating the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan River basins.
The river begins with a series of icefields, starting at the Columbia and continuing through the Chaba and Clemenceau icefields (Ommaney, 2002). While many visitors associate Athabasca Glacier with the river’s headwaters, it is in fact the source of the Sunwapta River and is just one of over 200 glaciers contributing to the watershed (GLIMS, 2005). The Sunwapta River, a tributary of the Athabasca, is fed by Athabasca, Dome, and Stutfield Glaciers. However, the Athabasca River proper begins at the meltwater of the Columbia Glacier which covers a greater area than Athabasca, Dome and Stutfield glaciers combined. Despite its importance as the true source, Columbia Glacier is far less visited than Athabasca Glacier. Its remote location requires a challenging 50-kilometer overland journey to reach.
As the Athabasca River flows downstream, it gathers contributions from a network of tributaries, including the Whirlpool, Astoria, and Miette Rivers before passing through the town of Jasper. Further downstream, it is joined by the Maligne, Snaring, Rocky, Indian, and Fiddle Rivers before reaching Hinton. While some tributaries, like the Sunwapta and Miette Rivers, have their flow measured, most contributions are modeled rather than directly monitored. The mainstem flow is tracked at key points in Jasper and Hinton, offering a glimpse into the hydrologic complexity of the river system.
The Challenges of Monitoring Mountain Climates
Weather in the mountains is highly localized and notoriously challenging to predict. As altitude and latitude increase, the number of monitoring stations decreases, largely due to the remoteness of these regions from population centers. While advances in remote sensing and climate modeling have improved our understanding, these efforts still rely heavily on data collected directly on the ground.
Climate models are validated by comparing their outputs to historical observations from monitoring stations, but the Upper Athabasca Watershed has relatively few of these critical data points. Currently, there are no active groundwater monitoring wells, only four active river discharge stations, and four weather stations. Furthermore, no monitoring stations exist above 2,000 meters, leaving significant gaps in high-altitude data. Without comprehensive background data, our understanding remains incomplete, leaving our hydrologic “tree” unrooted.
Works Cited
Campbell, É. M. S., & Ryan, M. C. (2021). Nested Recharge Systems in Mountain Block Hydrology: High-Elevation Snowpack Generates Low-Elevation Overwinter Baseflow in a Rocky Mountain River. Water, 13(16), Article 16. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13162249
GLIMS, & NSIDC. (2005). Global Land Ice Measurements from Space glacier database. Compiled and made available by the international GLIMS community and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder CO, U.S.A. [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.7265/N5V98602
Hwang, H.-T., Erler, A. R., Khader, O., Berg, S. J., Sudicky, E. A., & Jones, J. P. (2023). Estimation of groundwater contributions to Athabasca River, Alberta, Canada. Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 45, 101301. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101301
Newton, B. W., & Taube, N. (2023). Regional variability and changing water distributions drive large-scale water resource availability in Alberta, Canada. Canadian Water Resources Journal / Revue Canadienne Des Ressources Hydriques, 48(3), 300–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/07011784.2023.2186270
Ommanney, S. L. (2002, March 2). Glaciers of Canada: Glaciers of the Canadian Rockies. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Papers. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386j/canadianrockies/canrock-lores.pdf