Eric Higgs

Discover Canada’s mountains as you’ve never seen them before with gorgeous photography from the Mountain Legacy Project accompanied by gripping essays from mountaineers, artists, and mountain research...

Our webinars feature leading experts discussing a range of topics related to wildfires. Whether you're a researcher, practitioner, or simply interested in learning, our platform provides a space for d...

You are cordially invited to join us at the Millard Learning Centre classroom on Saturday July 12, 2025, 4:00pm-5:30pm, for a public talk by UVic Environmental Studies and Restoration of […]

By Alia Johnson Beyond being a powerful tool for understanding large-scale landscape change over time, historical photographs provide profound insights as a decision-making tool for the designe...

Recurring disturbance has a strong influence on the bounds of ecosystem variability. The concept historical range of variability (HRV) describes these bounds, providing a sense of the range of ecosystem characteristics exhibited in response to disturbance and recovery over time and space. Altered and novel disturbances can drive changes in ecosystem composition and configuration that depart from the HRV and lead to regimes shifts. In Jasper National Park, a systematic set of historical and repeated oblique photographs depict montane landcover in the aftermath of extensive fires in 1915 and a mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak in 2020/22. However, the MPB disturbance is historically unprecedented, and raises important questions about whether the characteristics of this event are within the HRV of the montane ecosystems. The focus of this dissertation is to apply a new workflow for deriving landcover maps from oblique photographs to evaluate the landcover changes that have occurred in the park’s montane ecoregion over the last 105 years. The workflow comprises a deep learning algorithm that automates the classification of landcover evident in grayscale and color oblique photographs and a georeferencing tool that incorporates these data into a GIS. I report on the accuracy of the data produced by the workflow (Chapter 2) and quantify the changes in composition and configuration of broad landcover types after the two disturbance events for a study area in the montane ecoregion (Chapter 3). A scenario planning exercise is then undertaken to evaluate the uncertainty surrounding the implications of these changes and the potential for future novel disturbance events (Chapter 4). Georeferencing accuracy using root-mean-square error for a subset of 7 images was 4.6 m and overall classification accuracy for the landcover map produced from oblique photographs using the new workflow was 68%. The change analysis in the montane ecoregion indicated that the MPB outbreak has returned a version of heterogeneity evident in 1915 to the landscape by reducing the dominance of mature conifer (both in composition and configuration) across the landscape. Four scenarios then describe alternative futures in the park based on different levels and combinations of ecological novelty and management intervention. The value of this research is to validate the development of a new workflow for analyzing historical and repeat photographs, increase the temporal depth of ecological monitoring in the park, and allow managers and restoration practitioners to develop a better understanding of how and where novel disturbance is altering ecological processes and could reoccur in the future.

Welcome back to another episode of "10 Questions." From post-doctoral fellows to research assistants, each person has been asked to share their unique perspectives, experiences and stories by respondi...

Ecosystems which have never been seen before are being accidentally created by humans. They offer a stark look into the nature of tomorrow.

Anthropogenic activity has irreparably altered the ecological fabric of Earth. The emergence of ecological novelty from diverse drivers of change is an increasingly challenging dimension of ecosystem....

The UN Glacier Year is Canada’s opportunity to show its leadership in all things snow and ice. In 2025, countries around the world are coming together to celebrate the splendour of glaciated landscape...

On 3 October 2023, a multihazard cascade in the Sikkim Himalaya, India, was triggered by 14.7 million cubic meters of frozen lateral moraine collapsing into South Lhonak Lake. The impact generated an ...

A mix of corolla sizes offers strong opportunities to promote urban biodiversity, according to Carly Ziter.

The Trump administration’s attacks on universities will lead to the permanent diminishment of vital American institutions.

As announced in Budget 2024, the scholarship and fellowship programs administered by the three federal research funding agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) – have been streamlined into a new harmonized talent program called the Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS) that will open for applications in summer 2025.