Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) Releases 2010 Annual Technical Report
May 4 2011Fort McMurray, Alberta – The Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) has issued its 2010 Annual Technical Report, the 13th such report produced by the monitoring group.
The technical, scientific report provides a detailed description of the methods, results and interpretation of the annual monitoring program undertaken by RAMP. Data collected, and contained in the report includes information related to climate and hydrology, water quality, benthic invertebrate communities, sediment quality, fish populations and fish health, and lakes sensitive to acidity.
From a regional perspective, overall, the report indicates no large-scale changes have been measured related to oil sands development, however, localized impacts in some watersheds have been observed, and RAMP plans additional follow-up monitoring in those areas.
RAMP has distributed the annual technical report to various regulatory agencies, the environmental science community and other interested stakeholders, and has made it available for public viewing and download, along with all Annual Technical Reports produced by RAMP since 1997, on RAMP’s website at www.ramp-alberta.org/ramp/results/report.aspx. The Executive Summary of the 2010 Annual Technical Report is available online at http://ramp-alberta.org/UserFiles/File/AnnualReports/2010/RAMP_2010_Final_Executive%20Summary.pdf.
All of the data contained in the 2010 Technical Report will also be incorporated into the publicly-accessible online database on the RAMP website, and will be available online by the end of May 2011. The new data will be added to the more than two million data records already compiled by RAMP through its active and on-going monitoring of the aquatic environment in the Lower Athabasca Region since 1997 and from additional aquatic monitoring information collected by Syncrude between 1987 and 1997.
About RAMP:
The Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP) is a science-based multi-stakeholder aquatic environmental monitoring program initiated in 1997; one of a number of programs monitoring the aquatic environment in the Lower Athabasca region of Alberta. The intent of RAMP is to determine, evaluate and communicate the state of the aquatic environment and any changes that may result from resource development within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
For more information:
RAMP Communications
communications@ramp-alberta.org
780-742-5147