FIELD TRIP
Urban Hydrogeology
of Calgary
Field Trip
Friday May 29, 2026
8 am - 5 pm
FIELD TRIP
Urban Hydrogeology
of Calgary
Field Trip
Friday May 29, 2026
8 am - 5 pm
About the Trip
On the second day of the conference, step outside the meeting rooms and into Calgary’s landscape, where the legacy of mountain building, great erosion, and glaciation is written in bedrock, tills, buried valleys, and meltwater deposits that still shape groundwater systems today. This field trip reveals how the bedrock landscape developed over the last 66 million years and how recent glaciers advanced, retreated, and reshaped the land. These events formed the valleys, ridges, and river systems that continue to influence the city’s hydrogeology, infrastructure, and development.
By integrating geomorphology, sedimentology, and hydrogeology, participants will gain a comprehensive view of Calgary’s subsurface framework while tracing connections between geological processes and present-day hydrogeological challenges. The city’s exposures provide powerful analogues for bedrock and glacial aquifers and aquitards across Alberta, offering practical insights into groundwater supply, dewatering, and groundwater surface water interactions.
More than a walk through the city, this is a chance to sharpen your field interpretation skills, link regional geological history to applied hydrogeology, and see firsthand how geology underpins Alberta’s growth. Day 2 promises to be an engaging, hands-on extension of the conference, an experience you won’t want to miss.
About the Hosts
Kevin Parks
M.Sc., Ph.D., P.Geo.
Dr. Parks is an Alberta-educated geologist and hydrogeologist with over 40 years of public geoscience, regulatory, and industry experience in Canadian geology and hydrogeology. His career includes over two decades in public geoscience at the Alberta Geological Survey and Alberta Energy Regulator, where he was accountable for programs in groundwater mapping, energy resource-appraisal and statistics, and geological hazards. As well, Dr. Parks has provided expert advice on management of groundwater and subsurface pore-space in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, the EU, and Australia. He has been a former chair and an ongoing contributor work to the Groundwater Resources Working Group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Expert Group in Resource Management since 2019. His career experience includes groundwater resources, contamination, and protection; oil and gas exploration and development; aquifer and reservoir characterization and modeling; oilsands mining and in-situ development; geothermal energy; geological hazards and induced seismicity. He has over 80 peer-reviewed papers, reports, regulatory documents, abstracts, and presentations on the geology of resource developments to his name. Dr. Parks is presently working with the Calgary geoscience community at large to locate and document outcrops showing our local geological heritage to new generations, as more of this heritage gets consumed by urban development each year.
Nigel Atkinson
M.Sc., Ph.D.
Nigel is originally from Liverpool in the UK. After completing a B.Sc. at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, focusing on glacial geology and geomorphology, he came to the University of Alberta in 1996 to work on an M.Sc. and then Ph.D., examining the Quaternary glacial history of the northwest Queen Elizabeth Islands in Canada's High Arctic. After finishing his Ph.D. in 2005, he took a contract position at the Alberta Geological Survey to map the distribution and sedimentology of buried channel aquifers in the Fort McMurray region. On completion of this project, Nigel was offered a permanent position which involved a move to the Surficial Mapping Program. He has been involved with surficial mapping for the past 18 years, including 8 years as Manager of the Quaternary Geology Section. In this time, he has published 37 maps of Alberta’s surficial and near-surface geology as well as thirty-two journal papers and reports on topics including the role of glacial tectonics on landscape evolution and regulatory geoscience, the application of high-resolution remote sensing technology for terrain sciences and high-latitude paleoclimate and ice sheet reconstruction. Outside of AGS, Nigel has maintained a close association with the University of Alberta, becoming an Adjunct Professor in the Earth Science Department, which has allowed him to supervise graduate students, as well as continue undergraduate teaching, both at field school and in the lecture theatre.
Nigel Atkinson
M.Sc., Ph.D.
Nigel is originally from Liverpool in the UK. After completing a B.Sc. at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, focusing on glacial geology and geomorphology, he came to the University of Alberta in 1996 to work on an M.Sc. and then Ph.D., examining the Quaternary glacial history of the northwest Queen Elizabeth Islands in Canada's High Arctic. After finishing his Ph.D. in 2005, he took a contract position at the Alberta Geological Survey to map the distribution and sedimentology of buried channel aquifers in the Fort McMurray region. On completion of this project, Nigel was offered a permanent position which involved a move to the Surficial Mapping Program. He has been involved with surficial mapping for the past 18 years, including 8 years as Manager of the Quaternary Geology Section. In this time, he has published 37 maps of Alberta’s surficial and near-surface geology as well as thirty-two journal papers and reports on topics including the role of glacial tectonics on landscape evolution and regulatory geoscience, the application of high-resolution remote sensing technology for terrain sciences and high-latitude paleoclimate and ice sheet reconstruction. Outside of AGS, Nigel has maintained a close association with the University of Alberta, becoming an Adjunct Professor in the Earth Science Department, which has allowed him to supervise graduate students, as well as continue undergraduate teaching, both at field school and in the lecture theatre.
About the Trip
On the second day of the conference, step outside the meeting rooms and into Calgary’s landscape, where the legacy of mountain building, great erosion, and glaciation is written in bedrock, tills, buried valleys, and meltwater deposits that still shape groundwater systems today. This field trip reveals how the bedrock landscape developed over the last 66 million years and how recent glaciers advanced, retreated, and reshaped the land. These events formed the valleys, ridges, and river systems that continue to influence the city’s hydrogeology, infrastructure, and development.
By integrating geomorphology, sedimentology, and hydrogeology, participants will gain a comprehensive view of Calgary’s subsurface framework while tracing connections between geological processes and present-day hydrogeological challenges. The city’s exposures provide powerful analogues for bedrock and glacial aquifers and aquitards across Alberta, offering practical insights into groundwater supply, dewatering, and groundwater surface water interactions.
More than a walk through the city, this is a chance to sharpen your field interpretation skills, link regional geological history to applied hydrogeology, and see firsthand how geology underpins Alberta’s growth. Day 2 promises to be an engaging, hands-on extension of the conference, an experience you won’t want to miss.
About the Hosts
Kevin Parks
M.Sc., Ph.D., P.Geo.
Dr. Parks is an Alberta-educated geologist and hydrogeologist with over 40 years of public geoscience, regulatory, and industry experience in Canadian geology and hydrogeology. His career includes over two decades in public geoscience at the Alberta Geological Survey and Alberta Energy Regulator, where he was accountable for programs in groundwater mapping, energy resource-appraisal and statistics, and geological hazards. As well, Dr. Parks has provided expert advice on management of groundwater and subsurface pore-space in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, the EU, and Australia. He has been a former chair and an ongoing contributor work to the Groundwater Resources Working Group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Expert Group in Resource Management since 2019. His career experience includes groundwater resources, contamination, and protection; oil and gas exploration and development; aquifer and reservoir characterization and modeling; oilsands mining and in-situ development; geothermal energy; geological hazards and induced seismicity. He has over 80 peer-reviewed papers, reports, regulatory documents, abstracts, and presentations on the geology of resource developments to his name. Dr. Parks is presently working with the Calgary geoscience community at large to locate and document outcrops showing our local geological heritage to new generations, as more of this heritage gets consumed by urban development each year.
Nigel Atkinson
M.Sc., Ph.D.
Nigel is originally from Liverpool in the UK. After completing a B.Sc. at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, focusing on glacial geology and geomorphology, he came to the University of Alberta in 1996 to work on an M.Sc. and then Ph.D., examining the Quaternary glacial history of the northwest Queen Elizabeth Islands in Canada's High Arctic. After finishing his Ph.D. in 2005, he took a contract position at the Alberta Geological Survey to map the distribution and sedimentology of buried channel aquifers in the Fort McMurray region. On completion of this project, Nigel was offered a permanent position which involved a move to the Surficial Mapping Program. He has been involved with surficial mapping for the past 18 years, including 8 years as Manager of the Quaternary Geology Section. In this time, he has published 37 maps of Alberta’s surficial and near-surface geology as well as thirty-two journal papers and reports on topics including the role of glacial tectonics on landscape evolution and regulatory geoscience, the application of high-resolution remote sensing technology for terrain sciences and high-latitude paleoclimate and ice sheet reconstruction. Outside of AGS, Nigel has maintained a close association with the University of Alberta, becoming an Adjunct Professor in the Earth Science Department, which has allowed him to supervise graduate students, as well as continue undergraduate teaching, both at field school and in the lecture theatre.
About the Hosts
Kevin Parks
M.Sc., Ph.D., P.Geo.
Dr. Parks is an Alberta-educated geologist and hydrogeologist with over 40 years of public geoscience, regulatory, and industry experience in Canadian geology and hydrogeology. His career includes over two decades in public geoscience at the Alberta Geological Survey and Alberta Energy Regulator, where he was accountable for programs in groundwater mapping, energy resource-appraisal and statistics, and geological hazards. As well, Dr. Parks has provided expert advice on management of groundwater and subsurface pore-space in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, the EU, and Australia. He has been a former chair and an ongoing contributor work to the Groundwater Resources Working Group of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Expert Group in Resource Management since 2019. His career experience includes groundwater resources, contamination, and protection; oil and gas exploration and development; aquifer and reservoir characterization and modeling; oilsands mining and in-situ development; geothermal energy; geological hazards and induced seismicity. He has over 80 peer-reviewed papers, reports, regulatory documents, abstracts, and presentations on the geology of resource developments to his name. Dr. Parks is presently working with the Calgary geoscience community at large to locate and document outcrops showing our local geological heritage to new generations, as more of this heritage gets consumed by urban development each year.
About the Trip
On the second day of the conference, step outside the meeting rooms and into Calgary’s landscape, where the legacy of mountain building, great erosion, and glaciation is written in bedrock, tills, buried valleys, and meltwater deposits that still shape groundwater systems today. This field trip reveals how the bedrock landscape developed over the last 66 million years and how recent glaciers advanced, retreated, and reshaped the land. These events formed the valleys, ridges, and river systems that continue to influence the city’s hydrogeology, infrastructure, and development.
By integrating geomorphology, sedimentology, and hydrogeology, participants will gain a comprehensive view of Calgary’s subsurface framework while tracing connections between geological processes and present-day hydrogeological challenges. The city’s exposures provide powerful analogues for bedrock and glacial aquifers and aquitards across Alberta, offering practical insights into groundwater supply, dewatering, and groundwater surface water interactions.
More than a walk through the city, this is a chance to sharpen your field interpretation skills, link regional geological history to applied hydrogeology, and see firsthand how geology underpins Alberta’s growth. Day 2 promises to be an engaging, hands-on extension of the conference, an experience you won’t want to miss.