The Garibaldi at Squamish Ski Resort is a proposed ski resort and year-round mountain resort on Brohm Ridge, 80 km north of Vancouver and 45 km south of Whistler. As a natural resource planner, I have been tasked to evaluate a few environmental impacts that the project will have if development goes through as planned.
During a two week long consultation period, criticisms were laid out that the area would not be a viable location due to unfavourable and unreliable snowfall conditions, which have become worse due to climate change. While 32% of the project area is below the suggested altitude of 600m, which represents a significant portion of the project area, this still leaves most of the area above the altitude needed for reliable rainfall.
By combining various datasets, I was able to demarcate regions within the project boundaries that are unsuitable for development, including areas with redlisted species, old growth forest management areas, and ungulate (hoofed mammal) wintering regions. Buffers were created around rivers to create riparian zones, at 100m below 600m and 50m above 600m.
Together, these regions made up 53% of the project area, and made the area fragmented in terms of areas that could be developed. Regardless of the snowfall due to altitude, the lower regions also cannot be developed due to large areas where redlisted species inhabit, including the Falsebox, Flatmoss, and Kinnikinnick.
In my opinion, the biggest challenges that this project faces is the task of creating a cohesive ski resort above the 600m point while still respecting the various ecological management zones. In addition, care must be taken to ensure that further development does not further threaten the species that are at-risk. Some limitations of this data is the fact that a year-round resort is planned, while only ungulate wintering zones have been analyzed.
When working on environmental projects, you sometimes become involved in proposals that you do not ethically believe in. I do not believe that this project should continue on ethical grounds, as the area does not need, and should not be subject to another ski resort, as there are 3 others in the area.
Accomplishment Statements
- Gained practical knowledge in searching for tabular and spatial data online for use in my own data analysis.
- Gained experience reclassifying raster datasets, working with elevation, and using this data to create multiple buffers for different elevations.
- Gained experience with hillshading and 3D analysis with elevation data.
