Stanley Park’s famous Beaver Lake has shrunk from a 6.7-hectare body of water to shallow wetland with very little open water. And environmental experts say that within the next 10 to 20 years, the lake will disappear entirely.

That’s why environmental science student Calvin Stuckert and Delphine Faugeroux, an international exchange student from AgroParisTech in France, have spent the past four months studying sediment samples from the lake.

They’re involved in a joint project with BCIT students to help the Stanley Park Ecological Society and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (VBPR) to determine how best to restore the lake.

Alan Duncan, an environmental planner with VBPR, expected the students’ research would reveal that gravel sloughing from the lakeside path was the culprit, along with invasive water lilies introduced into the lake in the 1930s.

But Faugeroux’s core sediment samples from the lake bottom didn’t reveal any gravel, only silt.

“It’s not just the footpath that’s responsible, it is more the lilies and their roots that are making the sedimentation in the already shallow lake,” says Faugeroux, who is still analyzing metal concentrations in the sediment samples.

Stuckert has been studying cadmium concentrations in insect larvae taken from the sediment samples to see if insectivorous birds that feed over the lake are at risk exposure to the toxic metal.

SFU biologist Leah Bendell and researchers from other institutions also helped the society develop its directives to environmental consultants bidding on the restoration work.

Duncan says the students’ research will help consultants determine how to restore the lake to a state where it can maintain a diversity of habitat into the next century.