Ignition Point: The Underappreciated Influence of Indigenous Burns

Ignition Point: The Underappreciated Influence of Indigenous Burns

In both the present and the past, it is clear that humans have had a strong effect on why, where, and how forests burn. Recently, LIM researcher Dr. Cameron Naficy found some clues in the Southwestern Foothills showing that Indigenous cultural burning was likely a stronger influence on this landscape than previously documented in the academic literature. In this post, we share some context for the different ignition sources of Alberta wildfires and present a sneak peek into some of Dr. Naficy’s early findings.

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Bringing oblique photography and wildfire research together using viewsheds

Bringing oblique photography and wildfire research together using viewsheds

What are viewsheds, and why use them? With the Landscapes in Motion teams now analyzing data and sharing the results, our teams are starting to explore new ways of collaborating and combining datasets. Here we share some insights on the process from a collaborator with the Oblique Photography Team, Mountain Legacy Project researcher James Tricker.

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Meet the Modelling Team!

Meet the Modelling Team!

Our field teams collect a massive amount of data from mountaintops and forests across the Eastern slopes of the Rockies. Because our team has the good fortune of such a big dataset, we can ask questions at a broader scale than a lot of other projects - we are even starting to predict what the future of these landscapes might look like.

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Burning Territory: Indigenous Fire Stewardship

Burning Territory: Indigenous Fire Stewardship

Landscapes in Motion has a mission to understand the fire history of Alberta’s southwest Rockies, which includes looking at pre-industrial fire and landscape patterns and seeing how they’ve changed. There are a lot of reasons that the nature and frequency of fire has changed in this region, and one very important reason was the suppression of Indigenous burning practices by European settlers and the Canadian government. We are honoured to present the following guest post by Amy Cardinal Christianson, a Métis/Cree woman raised in Treaty 8 territory and currently a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service.

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