Looking back on Landscapes in Motion
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Program Lead Dr. Dave Andison reflects on the achievements of Landscapes in Motion and what this project has taught him about what makes a great research project.
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Burning Questions: The LIM Team’s responses to questions from the online workshop
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The Landscapes in Motion Online Workshop was a great experience for our research team. It was an afternoon marked by great questions and exciting discussion. So much so, we ran out of time to answer several of the great questions posed by the participants! In this post, members of our team have responded to these questions.
Read MoreOn-the-ground findings point to a mixed-severity fire regime: Findings of the Fire Regime Team
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In this final piece summarizing the results of each Landscapes in Motion team, we discover what the Fire Regime Team learned from tree rings and fire scars carefully collected within the study area. Contrary to the usual assumption of stand-replacing fires, they discovered mixed-severity fire regimes with different characteristics (and different implications) in lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir forests.
Read MoreA more realistic model, a more diverse landscape: Findings of the Modelling Team
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There are many different ways to look at the landscapes and forests of Alberta’s Foothills. In this piece we enter a sophisticated landscape simulation with the Modeling team and watch how landscapes and biodiversity respond to fire when we take partial mortality into account.
Read MoreVisualizing landscapes of the past: Findings of the Visual Applications Team
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Landscapes in Motion is a project to improve the understanding of how, where, and when wildfires have occurred through Alberta’s southern Rocky Mountains. In this piece we scale mountains and step back in time with the Visual Applications team and discover how their participation helped improve the tools available to tell this landscape’s story.
Read MoreMaking a Difference: Lori Daniels Awarded the 2019 Canadian Forestry Scientific Achievement Award
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Fire Regime Team Lead Dr. Lori Daniels was recently awarded the 2019 Canadian Forestry Scientific Achievement Award by the Canadian Institute of Forestry. Read on to learn more about her collaborative approach to research, her work with Landscapes in Motion, and her drive to do important work that makes a difference.
Read MoreTime Travel: The Portal from Library and Archives Canada
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The Repeat Photography Team relies on historical photographs to determine which mountains to visit in the field, and compare them with modern photos to analyze how the landscape has changed since surveyors last stood there. But where do those historical photographs come from? Alina Fisher and Sonia Voicescu traveled to Library and Archives Canada to explore and process thousands of historical photographs, and they’ve shared their time travel experience.
Read MoreTwo years of Landscapes in Motion: What have we learned?
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Two years and countless hours of field, lab, and computer study by three diverse research teams have added up to new insights on the fire history of Alberta’s Southern Rockies. One of the key findings of the Landscapes in Motion research program to-date is that fire regimes in the Southern Rockies are complex, including low-severity burns and historical influences of fire suppression and Indigenous cultural burning. In this post, project coordinator Dr. David Andison and fire regime team lead Dr. Lori Daniels share what the implications of these findings might be, what questions remain to be answered, and where our work is going next.
Read MoreWhy model partial mortality?
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One potential consequence of mixed severity fire regimes is that some trees may survive lower intensity fires. This phenomenon is called “partial mortality”, and it can have a variety of consequences for what the landscape looks like and becomes after a fire. When trees survive, they may offer refuge for wildlife, help speed up revegetation by producing seeds, and/or help to maintain the presence of other types of vegetation like lichens. In this blog post, we discuss how the Landscapes in Motion modeling team is studying partial mortality in the Southern Foothills of Alberta using simulation models, and why this research is important for understanding the fire history of this region.
Read MoreUnforeseen Resilience to Frequent Fires in Lodgepole Pine Forests of Alberta’s Foothills
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One of the main goals of the Landscapes in Motion Fire Regime team is to reconstruct forest fire dynamics of Alberta’s Southern Rockies using evidence from tree ring samples. After two years of field sampling, lab work, and analyzing and interpreting the data, Fire Regime researcher Dr. Cameron Naficy has started to see the fruits of his labour. He and his team have learned that the lodgepole pine forests of Alberta’s Southern Rockies were more resilient to frequent burning and more structurally complex than previously thought. In this post, we share more about Dr. Naficy’s findings and what the implications might be for managing Alberta’s forests.
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