Lab 5: Environmental Impact Assessment

Accomplishment Statement:

Learned to effectively perform data visualization (acquired, parsed, filtered, represented, and refined spatial data) to assess the possible environmental impact of a proposed ski resort.

 

 

Within this lab, I was presented with a scenario of assessing the potential environmental impacts of the proposed Garibaldi project in the Squamish area as a resourced planner hired by the British Columbia Snowmobile Federation (BCSF). In order to complete this assessment,  there was an analysis performed using the map of the project area displaying: the elevation requirement of the land in order for snow to exist and ecologically substantial areas which maybe disturbed by the construction of the project. Moreover, the following report was conducted to explain the results of the analysis.

Map: lab5

MEMO: Environmental assessment of the Garibaldi at Squamish project

TO: British Columbia Snowmobile Federation

The following memo assesses the suitability for the Garibaldi project (mountain resort) to take place in Brohm Ridge, 15 kilometers north of Squamish on Highway 99. This project would include 124 ski trails and 23 lifts, plus resort accommodation and commercial developments. This memo will use ArcGIS to analyze the environmental impacts which would occur along with the construction of this project.

 

Firstly, obtaining the information and data is required, which includes the project/park boundaries, ungulated winter ranges, fish habitat, road accessibility, red listed ecosystems, and elevation. After acquiring the data, I inputted them into ArcGIS as layers and clipped each layer to the project boundary making sure that each dataset constituted of only the required project area. In order to determine how much area is usable in the project area, I needed to combine all these factors and divide it by the overall area of the project. Since the elevation of 555 meters is important to the location in creating and sustaining a cold enough environment for snow to prevail affecting its ability to support skiing, I calculated the percentage of the project area that was under 555m by first reclassifying the DEM (digital elevation map) that was under 555 meters using the spatial analyst tool. Following that, I converted the layer from a raster to a polygon which allowed me to view the statistics of the Shape_Area field in the attributes table of the layer and divide that by the total project area (which is also found in the attributes table). The rest of percentages of environmentally protected areas (old growth management areas, fishery habitat, ungulated winter ranges, and red listed ecosystems) within the project area were determined using similar methods. Since there are many layers with areas/polygons that overlapped, I used the union tool as well as the dissolve tool to combine the entire overlapping polygon into one larger one, making it easier to determine the total area that is environmentally protected. I then used this value and divided by the overall project area.

 

Thus, the calculated percentage of the project area that is below 555 meters is 29.9%, which is not able to use for skiing because of its low elevation. Moreover, the percentage of total environmentally protected land stands at 53.4%. This means that more than 80% of the overall project area is unusable proving the large scale of impact that the project would cause on the environment within the project area.

 

In my perspective, the two greatest environmental concerns to the project development are the large amount of climatologically deemed ‘unusable’ land due to low elevations as well as the effect on the environmentally protected lands which make up more than half of the project area. Although some areas with elevations close to but still lower than 555 meters can still be salvageable through the use of artificial snow, it is very expensive to maintain these machines and they are not very environmentally friendly which requires the water to create. The best decision is not develop the project within this area all together as the environmental impacts seems costly and outweighs the brief economic benefits of the resort.

 

Personal thoughts on the Garibaldi at Squamish project proposal:

Personally, according to the analysis conducted, I believe that this project should not be allowed to proceed. From an environmental impact perspective, there are all sorts of indications of damages to the existing ecosystems and wildlife due to the limited amount of viable ski slopes in the project area. Moreover, because of the existence of much larger nearby ski resorts in Whistler, there will not be much of a demand for a this Garibaldi ski area.