The Landscape: Surface and Groundwater
Hydrologically, the knob and kettle terrain of the Beaver Hills plays an important role in the regional ground and surface water cycle. Effectively, the moraine functions as an extensive groundwater recharge area, transferring surface water into aquifers that in turn supply some of the other major water features of the region, including Cooking Lake, Beaverhill Lake and the North Saskatchewan River (Geowest 1997, Mitchell and Prepas 1990).
Surface water collects in the many wetlands and small lakes across the moraine, most of which have no outlet streams. The accumulated water percolates through the underlying sediments and into aquifers below. Some of that groundwater flow later emerges in small creeks and lakes within the moraine (e.g., Cooking Lake, Halfmoon Lake, Islet Lake, Astotin, Ross and Point-au-Pins Creeks). Flow from the small streams originating in the Beaver Hills passes across the surrounding, lower plains, eventually releasing into Beaverhill Lake and the North Saskatchewan River.
Although the moraine retains much of the precipitation within the various wetlands and small lakes, surface-collected flows are not entirely absent. In fact, there appears to be a complex interaction between groundwater and surface water flow that supplies many of the waterbodies in the moraine and, to a certain extent, the surrounding plains.
The few internal drainage systems within the moraine collect surface flow and direct it, through the moraine and into larger waterbodies on the surrounding plains. Cooking, McFadden, Halfmoon and Antler Lakes, for example, are connected to Hastings Lake by Cooking Lake Creek. In most years, surface flow remains in this internal drainage system, but in wet years, these flows spill over into the creek, through Hastings Lake and then continue east toward Beaverhill Lake. Similarly, other creeks carry excess flow from the northwest moraine to the North Saskatchewan River.