Vegetation / boreal
My Session Status
Sub Sessions
Despite the vastness of the boreal and the wealth of information about this ecosystem, there is inconsistency in how large disturbances are mapped and attributed (Remmel and Perera, 2017). The BorealDB dataset (Ouellette et al., 2020) implements a consistent methodology for mapping historical fire and timber harvesting disturbances for Ontario as point data derived from a mosaic of independently classified Landsat scenes. This study assessed the confidence of BorealDB classifications withi...
Forests in Unama’ki (Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) have undergone significant changes in recent decades. Boreal forest succession in Unama’ki is largely influenced by naturally-occurring cyclical spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana (Clemens)) outbreaks which defoliate and kill trees (Franklin et al., 2015). The most severe outbreak of spruce budworm was seen in the late 1970s (Ostaff & MacLean, 1989). Followed by an increase in moose populations, heavy moose browse prevented bo...
Natural landscapes are composed of a variety of biotic and abiotic elements that interact in multiple ways and across scales, resulting in dynamic systems transitioning through complex states. The state of a landscape at an instance in time can be represented on a regular grid, where the value at each cell represents a mutually exclusive land cover class. When the parameters that define the representation are fixed then it is possible to describe the resultant patt...
Protecting and monitoring the state of vegetation over a variety of scales generally incorporates the use of automated methods of processing multispectral satellite remote sensing data to inform decision-making. For instance, observation of boreal forest post-disturbance recovery has become a major research theme in Canada. Of specific interest, Ontario’s managed boreal forest, a resource for sustainable harvest, has been impacted by climate change in recent decade...
The L’Anse aux Meadows archaeological UNESCO World Heritage site on the northern tip of Newfoundland, offers a unique opportunity to study the possible human disturbance from the long-term Indigenous activity of the area as well as the Viking settlement there discovered in 1960. This site is one of the few places where we are able to study the impacts of First Nations groups as well as pre-Columbian Europeans on the same landscape. The goal of this project is to pr...
Pine barrens are an ecosystem type unique to North America that developed following deglaciation and contain many rare species of fauna and flora. They are fire-dependent ecosystems because both their species compositions and their reproductive cycles rely on the regular disturbance of wildfire. The Albany Pine Bush is the best intact inland pitch pine-scrub oak barren in the Northeastern United States. After many years of land development and fi...