Land and Water Environment Research

With our constructed wetlands facility, Olds College is the place to go for wetland management solutions, applied research, and education. Our facility serves as a model to demonstrate the way wetlands can help reduce negative impacts on our environment and the increasing demand for clean water. We are producing high-quality recycled water through the removal of sediments, contaminants and undesirable nutrients with the use of plants for phytoremediation and new cold climate technologies, while researching wetlands in cold, high latitude climates. Together the constructed wetlands and the Botanical Garden provide an outdoor laboratory for students, an industry training site, and a nucleus for community programs – all in one. Extensive wetland applied research is also carried on in the Olds College greenhouses and off-campus sites with various industry partners.

Our Research Goals

• To find ways to negate water shortages, a problem that threatens the future of not just Canada, but the world at large.

• To find natural and efficient methods of irrigation by spearheading research that has never been done before.

• To create ways to promote and enable effective environmental stewardship through its research. 

Land and Water Environment Research

• Excess Nutrient Removal
  Finding ways to effectively remove excess nutrients and undesirable chemicals from water was step one into opening a multitude of avenues to apply wetlands research, and the various wetland plants was the solution. 

• Feedlot Runoff
  Applying wetlands research to feedlot runoff water can mean the difference between wasting and reusing water, which can lead to an effective resource producers can use on their farm for watering crops, and other tasks that require irrigated water. 

• Wastewater use on Golf Courses
  Similar to the feedlot runoff research, Olds College is conducting research in helping golf courses convert the waste water they produce to usable, irrigated water that can be repurposed directly on site. 

• Waste management
  Environment research is being done to find efficient and effective methods of managing waste in water systems.

• Water Testing
  Using controlled samples on the Olds College Campus to compare with the samples that it collects from its natural wetlands in Balzac, environment research continues to quantify the effectiveness of natural irrigation methods.

• Floating Islands
  Using natural wetlands plants, Olds college is developing and testing floating islands to determine their effectiveness in irrigating wetland runoff water.

Our Partners