Mountain Legacy and the FRIAA Grande Cache Landscape Change Project
Background
MLP is an interdisciplinary collaboration focused on exploring change in Canada's mountain environments. Utilizing over 140,000 images taken by land surveyors from 1861 - 1953, MLP researchers seek to re-photograph these images as accurately as possible and make the resulting image pairs available for further investigation.
For more information on the project check out mountainlegacy.ca Contact Us: [email protected] |
Purpose
In 1945 and 46 Michael Nidd, a land surveyor for the Canadian government, was making maps of the Grande Cache area. Using a technique called phototopography he took a series of high quality panoramic images from every survey station he visited.
In 2016 Mountain Legacy researchers, supported by a grant from the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta (FRIAA), and working with partners from Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, and Library and Archives Canada, located the historic images and went out on the land to rephotograph them as accurately as possible. The resulting historic and modern image pairs were aligned, overlaid, classified, and analyzed for landscape changes (and similarities). The image pairs can be used to show vegetation and land use changes that may help to identifying potential wildfire issues in the Grande Cache area. |