SSI FreshWater Catalogue - McFadden Creek (MFCK)

SSI FreshWater Catalogue

SSI, NORTH Watersheds

McFadden (MFCK) Watershed "Notes"

- North End, North Beach Road, north coast -

LAST UPDATE 2024/02/05

SSI North Area - overview watersheds (colour coded, CRD, 2018) & watershed note area

North Island, McFadden Creek Watershed (MFCK)

From our ongoing North Island, Freshwater Cataloguing - notes on the McFadden (MFCK) watershed. Cf. the SSI FWC webmap for field locations and charted information (where available).

The content of these "Notes" entries is dependant on the information that is currently available, from FWC volunteer work, FWC reporting or from other sources. We have no active FWC volunteers in this important watershed area.

Note - if you have additional insights into this area (the watershed, it's creeks or wetlands), can help with site(s) access, or are interested in being involved in data collection for this project area, please contact the SSIFWC Project Lead.

For now these notes draw heavily extracts from our monthly FWC "Which Creek Is It" Competition, from our Salt Spring Island FreshWater Catalogue Watershed Stewardship Group Facebook page, with "field note" addendums where additional information has become available. Additional volunteer resources will enable us to do more!

The data collected from FWC field work in the McFadden Creek watershed gather year-round flow and chemistry baseline data, investigating watershed surface water and groundwater baseflow(?) discharge to the sea. These are a key component to any planned watershed, or areal water budget/water balance, and input to validating (ground-truthing) developing groundwater recharge potential models.

General Watershed & FWC Creek(s) Information:

The McFadden Creek Watershed is located in the North Salt Spring Island area, with a creek sea outfall on the north coast of the island. Principle watershed catchment areas are associated with higher relief areas to the NW and W of the watershed area.

Within the McFadden Creek watershed McFadden Creek is a relatively simple creek system, with limited, and small, second-order ephemeral(?) stream segments and supported (seasonally?) by several local spring contributions. The creek system outfall supports a local, McFadden Creek, estuary at its sea outfall, and may support fish (anadromous cutthroat trout) in the lower reaches (McCollough et al., 2011).

McFadden Creek was a June 2021, Which Creek Is It competition entry, with the WCIT creek images collected at roadside creek sites along North End - Beach End Road - see the SSIFWC webmap for field locations. An upstream , heavily modified (drainage) spur "creek" feeder was a May 2023 Which Creek Is It, taken from the roadside on North End Road.

McFadden Creek watershed overview (Lidar backdrop), and various area, spring, wetland and creek images

The McFadden Creek watershed

The McFadden Creek (MFCK) watershed is the one of the intermediate size watersheds on the island, some 419 hectares (1,036 acres) in size. The watershed is similar in size to the Larlow Creek and Cable Creek (2112) watersheds in the south of the island
The watershed receives something like 3,980,500,000 litres (1,051,540,000 gallons) of rainfall (or surface water) per annum ( water volumes are approximate with no consideration of surface/terrain conditions, nor rainfall variability within the catchment area)
McFadden Creek is the principle creek in the watershed (see watershed area map), with this creek being the single sea-outfall from the watershed area
Within the watershed area are approximately 140 groundwater wells and a number of licenced springs
There is no known surface or subsurface water district abstraction from within this watershed area.

Historical & Other Watershed Insights:

McFadden Creek takes its name from James (Jimmy) McFadden who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company before becoming one of the original settlers in this area of northern Salt Spring (originally known as Beggsville). A McFadden Creek Nature Sanctuary (5.08 hectares, 12.57 acres), a mixed second growth forest is located in the northwestern part of the watershed. McFadden Creek flows through this sanctuary area, under North Beach Road and to the ocean (IT, SSI Conservancy., 2015).

N/A - any local insights, or interested in contributing to the historical/other notes on our islands' watersheds, please contact the SSIFWC Project Lead.

FWC "Citizen Science" & Other Watershed Notes - Reporting:

Year-round (or seasonal) creek flow from the McFadden Creek watershed is currently being documented by a north island field team, with ongoing FWC field programme works addressing creek flow (and chemistry) data gap in this significant north island watershed. With the exception of short data collection periods: summer 2017 (SSIWPA) and WInter 2019 (FWC) and a tiny amount of other contributing seasonal creek data (Hoskin, Weisner), from 1970 and 1979 (Barnett 1993) this FWC is all the data available for this creek system.

McFadden Creek has no major upstream barriers to fish migration and cutthroat trout have been observed upstream (Manley & Stewardson, 2014).

The southeastern McFadden watershed boundary lies very close to St Marys lake, though there is no visible St Mary Lake outfall (spill) at this McFadden watershed location. This southeastern watershed area is close to the North - South St. Mary Lake geological fault system (fault planes or a fault zone), a significant fault system that expresses itself as a spring (ie a freshwater flow pathway) on the north of Booth Inlet (Golder, 2019). These N. to S. St. Mary Lake through-going faults may act as conduits for more saline water incursions (Hodge, 1995; Greenwood, 2011; Laroque et al., 2015), local springs, and/or play a role in controlling/maintaining flow in McFadden Creek (over geological time... faults are known to leak!).

To-date there is insufficient FWC data available in this watershed for a robust data analysis and detailed working model and water budget reporting. Ongoing local data collection in this area will provide improved insights into how this watershed (and it's related freshwater ecosystems) work, are impacted by seasonal (or climatic…) changes, and will help with an improved understanding of how surface water catchment in the watershed contribute to aquifer recharge and local island water resource availability...

As per the development of freshwater cataloguing date at other watershed outfall sites (see SSIFWC webmap for details). Additional McFadden Creek Watershed data collection will support improving (areal) groundwater budget/water balance estimates. "A year-round hydrometric flow network at major surface water features near their outlet to the sea, particularly in areas of higher groundwater use and population where recharge estimates are more important... would support estimates of surface water run-off and groundwater recharge" (Golder, 2019). The McFadden Creek nature reserve management plan (IT Conservancy & SSI Conservancy., 2015), also highlights a need to "Implement water quality monitoring with a local stream monitoring group to assess changes in water quality over time". FWC - IT-Conservancy collaboration (2023- ) on creek site access and data collection is ongoing!

Interested in being involved in this north island watershed area , and/or in joining our "north island" FWC team- please contact the SSIFWC Project Lead.

McFadden Creek - initial findings:

FWC findings to-date indicate that McFadden Creek may be a seasonal (possibly partly groundwater fed?) creek system.

Creek water temperature variability (perhaps showing an inverse relationship with air temperature??) may indicate a groundwater baseflow component to streamflow. However, limited-no flow during summer suggests any groundwater base flow is very intermittent and may be (seasonally) water table dependant...

Conductivities within the creek system are higher than the majority of our island field sites. There are various working models that may explain water temprature fluctuations and the variable creek conductivities and associated in-creek "stressed aquatic system health", potentially with multiple seasonal and/or other control mechanisms:

immediately prior to no flow, evaporitic/very low flow conditions occurring particulraly during shoulder seasons
saline groundwater intrusions (close to a north island area with "salt springs", potentially localised to faulting/fracture networks?
a local salt spring (or tidal) influx into the creek system (surface/near surface) during times of lower flow (less likely given distances to the coast)
in-creek salinities might be influenced by period fluid flow connections along the striking N-S faults that run through from St Mary Lake to the coast!

Further field data is required.

FWC Images and Videos:

McFadden Creek Watershed FWC field images. Note - all FreshWater Catalogue images & videos copywrite belongs with the WPS and the FWC. We are grateful for due acknowledgement of copywrite in any use or publication of these educational resources.

Other Local Area Resources:

Barnett et al., 1993., Salt Spring Island Water Allocation Plan.
Sjuberg, G., 2002., Trust gets earful on estuary plan.
Greenwood, H.J. 2011., Saltspring groundwater in bedrock. A preliminary study for Saltspring Water Council.
McCullough M., 2011., Anadromous Coastal Cutthroat Trout Habitat Reconnaissance. FLNRO.
Manley, D., & Stewardson, M., 2014., Salt Spring Island Riparian Areas Regulation Mapping Project. Mainstream Biological Consulting, sponsored by IT.
IT & SSI Conservancy., 2015., McFadden Creek Nature Sanctuary Property Management Plan Salt Spring Island.
Klassen., J., and Allen, D. M., 2016., Risk of Saltwater Intrusion in Coastal Bedrock Aquifers: Gulf Islands, BC. SFU Department of Earth Sciences.
Gorski, N. G., and Sacre, J. P. (Golder), 2019., Aquifer Mapping and Monthly Groundwater Budget Analysis for Aquifers on Salt Spring Island. BC Water Science Series WSS2019-01, Province of British Columbia.

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