Describes a project designed to obtain and record existing ecological knowledge of northern Alberta river basins as recorded in archival documents. The documents researched and recorded in a database for this project included journals of fur traders, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, settlers, and travellers; archived government records such as those from the Geological Survey of Canada and the Dept. of Indian and Northern Affairs; and information from the Hudson Bay Company archives. The database consists of 233 records which may be searched for specific ecological information ranging from river flooding to fish harvest, fur trade and weather records, geological and environmental descriptions, and illness and death of both humans and animals.