Southern Foothills Study - A Future Worth Protecting

Post date: Apr 28, 2015 7:34:13 PM

The original Southern Foothills Study (SFS) was centered around the question of "How do we respect and protect the essential qualities and existing valuable assets of this landscape while still allowing for an evolution of land uses?" It examined the future trajectory of existing land uses and found that key environmental indicators showed a slow but steady loss of environmental health and ecological integrity. The projected future decline is in addition to already significant negative changes.

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the application of Beneficial Management Practices would halt or reverse the decline in the environmental indicators which the first phase of the study showed to be happening under a Business as Usual Scenario. Though this loss is not rapid, it is steady. Unless Albertans act now to change this trajectory, today's children can expect to see severe degradation in their lifetime, while unborn generations will never know and enjoy the rich natural bounty we take for granted in the Southern Foothills today The scientific methodology developed to examine land use by the ALCES® Group and deployed with the ALCES® (A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator) was central to this study. From the very beginning of the Southern Foothills Study, all participants agreed that bringing a rigorous scientific approach to bear on this challenge was critical to finding appropriate solutions.

The full report is available below and a higher resolution version can be downloaded from the SALTS website http://www.salts-landtrust.org/sfs/sfs_reporting.html#downloads_1