Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic

In the era of climate change, landscape features and their systems are becoming altered in unpredictable ways. In sensitive areas such as the arctic, it is important to monitor these landscape features and develop protection strategies to keep the natural systems they are connected to in balance. Ho...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Couvrette, Katie
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27815
id ftqueensuniv:oai:qspace.library.queensu.ca:1974/27815
record_format openpolar
spelling ftqueensuniv:oai:qspace.library.queensu.ca:1974/27815 2023-05-15T14:58:11+02:00 Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic Couvrette, Katie 2020-05-13T15:52:52Z http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27815 en eng http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27815 Northwest Territories Historical Vertical Aerial Photography Landscape Features Arctic Ponds Tree Islands Shrub Boundaries thesis 2020 ftqueensuniv 2020-12-29T09:10:10Z In the era of climate change, landscape features and their systems are becoming altered in unpredictable ways. In sensitive areas such as the arctic, it is important to monitor these landscape features and develop protection strategies to keep the natural systems they are connected to in balance. However, the first step in this process is to quantify the extent to which these features are changing. One of the ways in which we can do this is through historical vertical aerial photography. This study looks at the feasibility of distinguishing landscape features from 20 historical vertical aerial photographs located in the central Northwest Territories and their feasibility of quantification through time. By narrowing in on the vegetated margins of ponds, tree islands between the forest-tundra ecozone and shrub boundaries this project discerned the feasibility of measuring change on the arctic landscape through time. This was done by comparing the historic photographs to contemporary satellite imagery, and were quantified through ArcMap v 10.5. The study found 110 ponds increased in area over time and 265 declined. 17 of those ponds decreased and fragmented dramatically, but it was not enough to attribute these outliers to landscape wide change. The number of trees found in the 10 plots surveyed on the landscape saw growth, with densities doubling through time, however areas of low density in 1946 were subject to low densities in 2010. Shrub boundaries were not measured, as through careful consideration, the orthorectification of the photographs did not prove to be reliable enough to produce conclusive results. The manipulation of the historical vertical aerial photographs proved to produce a number of opportunities for inaccuracies, and these were critically observed and a set of best practices was developed to help with the maneuvering and feature discursion of these remote photographs. Future research would include the ground validation of these results and a set of intermediate data between the two time periods. Thesis Arctic Climate change Northwest Territories Subarctic Tundra Queen's University, Ontario: QSpace Arctic Northwest Territories
institution Open Polar
collection Queen's University, Ontario: QSpace
op_collection_id ftqueensuniv
language English
topic Northwest Territories
Historical Vertical Aerial Photography
Landscape Features
Arctic Ponds
Tree Islands
Shrub Boundaries
spellingShingle Northwest Territories
Historical Vertical Aerial Photography
Landscape Features
Arctic Ponds
Tree Islands
Shrub Boundaries
Couvrette, Katie
Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
topic_facet Northwest Territories
Historical Vertical Aerial Photography
Landscape Features
Arctic Ponds
Tree Islands
Shrub Boundaries
description In the era of climate change, landscape features and their systems are becoming altered in unpredictable ways. In sensitive areas such as the arctic, it is important to monitor these landscape features and develop protection strategies to keep the natural systems they are connected to in balance. However, the first step in this process is to quantify the extent to which these features are changing. One of the ways in which we can do this is through historical vertical aerial photography. This study looks at the feasibility of distinguishing landscape features from 20 historical vertical aerial photographs located in the central Northwest Territories and their feasibility of quantification through time. By narrowing in on the vegetated margins of ponds, tree islands between the forest-tundra ecozone and shrub boundaries this project discerned the feasibility of measuring change on the arctic landscape through time. This was done by comparing the historic photographs to contemporary satellite imagery, and were quantified through ArcMap v 10.5. The study found 110 ponds increased in area over time and 265 declined. 17 of those ponds decreased and fragmented dramatically, but it was not enough to attribute these outliers to landscape wide change. The number of trees found in the 10 plots surveyed on the landscape saw growth, with densities doubling through time, however areas of low density in 1946 were subject to low densities in 2010. Shrub boundaries were not measured, as through careful consideration, the orthorectification of the photographs did not prove to be reliable enough to produce conclusive results. The manipulation of the historical vertical aerial photographs proved to produce a number of opportunities for inaccuracies, and these were critically observed and a set of best practices was developed to help with the maneuvering and feature discursion of these remote photographs. Future research would include the ground validation of these results and a set of intermediate data between the two time periods.
format Thesis
author Couvrette, Katie
author_facet Couvrette, Katie
author_sort Couvrette, Katie
title Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
title_short Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
title_full Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
title_fullStr Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
title_full_unstemmed Using Historical Vertical Aerial Photography to Map Landscape Change Through Time in the Central Subarctic
title_sort using historical vertical aerial photography to map landscape change through time in the central subarctic
publishDate 2020
url http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27815
geographic Arctic
Northwest Territories
geographic_facet Arctic
Northwest Territories
genre Arctic
Climate change
Northwest Territories
Subarctic
Tundra
genre_facet Arctic
Climate change
Northwest Territories
Subarctic
Tundra
op_relation http://hdl.handle.net/1974/27815
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