SHIM in Chilliwack: Ford, Marble, Patterson and Calkins Creeks

With intentions of developing a Master Drainage Plan, the City of Chilliwack is currently conducting a survey of all of its watercourses. Beginning with a proposal from The University College of the Fraser Valley (UCFV) in April 2001, a grant was provided from the Real Estate Foundation of B.C. to conduct SHIM for the watersheds of Chilliwack’s Eastern Hillside. Since the initial funding of the project, the City has taken over the funding.The success of the project has been accomplished through a partnership involving Fisheries and Oceans Canada, B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, UCFV’s Cascade Institute, and MCC Ecoworks. The City has provided transportation, a cellular phone and a microcomputer to the team. The GPS unit used for the mapping has been provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. UCFV’s Cascade Institute in Chilliwack has provided work space for the team which is used for the GIS data interpretation of the watercourses. MCC Ecoworks has been contracted to provide the members of the team conducting SHIM on the Eastern Hillsides.

The purpose of this survey is to determine the following information for the City:

•  accurate watercourse location
•  channel dimensions (cross sections)
•  watercourse elevations
•  channel flow volumes
•  presence of fish or potential to provide fish habitat
•  obstacles to fish passages (culverts, falls etc.)

Because the previous watercourses on the Eastern Hillside are not accurately depicted, the streams are being mapped, using a GPS, to determine their accurate locations. Sensitive Habitat Inventory and Mapping (SHIM) mapping standards are being recognized which makes the data collected useful to multiple organizations including Fisheries and Oceans Canada. This information will be used by the City to determine appropriate development zones, especially in regard to stream presence. The watercourses mapped will also be available to the public on the SHIM website as the data is processed.

The landowners of the Eastern Hillside containing property where watercourses flow are contacted before inventory begins to keep them informed about the project and surveyors entering their land.The stream inventory has been collected using a Trimble Pathfinder GPS. As the team of two walks through a stream, satellites record the user’s path, recording a specific point every second. Using version 24 of the data dictionary associated with the GPS, the team records an array of data for every segment of the stream. The collection of data includes measurements about specific water levels, substrate of the creek, vegetation covering and riparian zone classifications, as well as the tops of the riparian zone banks. Specific features are also recorded such as fish habitat location, waterbody presence such as tributaries, and man-made modifications such as culverts, to name a few.

The City has also required the collection of cross-section data to be recorded when there is a significant change in the slope or riparian vegetation of the stream. These cross sections (Fig. 1) will be valuable to the City as they determine where suitable areas to develop are located, including the tops of banks. Data is collected for each band in a cross-section including specific types of vegetation as well as the bearings and gradients.

The data that is collected in the field is brought back to the office at the Cascade Institute and interpreted using the ArcView GIS. This program enables the user to clean up the raw data and to create an accurate streamline that may be usable by the City. This data will be applied to Chilliwack’s older maps.

Since April 2001, four watersheds have been mapped including Elk, Ford, Marble and Patterson Creeks. Calkins Creek is currently being mapped but will not be completed in this phase of the project.There has been a lot of important data collected in the field from this project which will be valuable to both the City of Chilliwack and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Many tributaries as well as other waterbodies have been found on the hillside which have not been recognized on recent Chilliwack maps. There have also been a number of areas noted which contain obstructions directly related to the streams as well as developments relative to them. Some of these include banks with high degrees of erosion, roads and culverts which have collapsed over time and are obstructing water flow, areas which have been clear-cut and where vegetative buffer zones for the stream have been ignored, and even areas where the stream has been completely ploughed over. Many sites have also been encountered which contain the presence of fish. All of these points which have been nested with the GPS may be returned to in the future. Areas which have not been completed, including the remainder of Calkins Creek, must be revisited in the future, as this project continues.

Recommendations:
There are a few recommendations in regard to the enhancement of the data dictionary. Features such as ‘barbed wire fence’ or ‘pond’ would be useful to have because we ran across many of these. It may also be useful to create a feature in the data dictionary to write or estimate the distance of the top of bank for each segment instead of only asking if the top of bank is in the band or not.

This case study was prepared by Ryan Klassen for the ‘Planning Sustainable Communities Workshop’ sponsored by the Community Mapping Network (www.shim.bc.ca) and the Township of Langley. The workshop, held March 15, 2002, showcased examples of mapping as a tool for sustainable planning. These examples were compiled in the workshop’s summary document ‘Planning Sustainable Communities’ by Glen Porter of G.L. Porter Consulting with support from Brad Mason (Fisheries and Oceans Canada); Rob Knight (Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection); Gretchen Harlow (Environment Canada); and, Kathleen Moore (Environment Canada). These case studies were later added to the BC Stewardship Centre Case Study Library by Sara Muir Owen with support from Rod Silver (Habitat Conservation Trust Fund).

City of Chilliwack
Ryan Klassen
Chilliwack SHIM mapp
8550 Young Road
Chilliwack, BC Canada
V2P 8A4
Phone: 604-819-7851
Email: ryanklassen@chilliwack