Landscapes - People - Global change

Tag: remote sensing

Lab alumna on Quirks & Quarks

Ellen Whitman identifying post-fire understory vegetation in Northern Alberta.

Ellen Whitman identifying post-fire understory vegetation in Northern Alberta for her PhD at the University of Alberta.

Exciting to hear Ellen Whitman, MES 2013, on CBC Radio 1’s Quirks &Quarks this past weekend, talking with Bob McDonald about her summer field season on post-fire impacts in the north. She did a great job, and touched briefly on her work with Eric Rapaport and I on her Masters working on fire at the peri-urban fringe of Halifax. She is now working on her PhD in Mike Flannigan’s lab at the University of Alberta, looking at fire regimes and adaptation under short-interval fires, combining field observation and remote sensing. Exciting to hear about her progress, and rather awe-inspiring to hear her expertise, so eloquently and smoothly delivered during the 15-minute segment.

Mitacs Globalink interviews and rankings

Thursday and Friday this week I had skype interviews with five upper-year undergraduate candidates for my Mitacs Globalink internship opportunities on Sustainable Landscapes and Seascapes in the Falkland Islands. What a remarkable group of young people! Four Chinese candidates and one from India, all skilled in geomatics and with a wide range of other diverse interests, engaged me in clear English conversation on diverse areas of my scholarship and their own interests. I was very impressed, and the subsequent ranking process was very difficult. I hope they all find a satisfying post under this excellent program. A successful internship also provides them access to funded Masters fellowships in Canada.

Mactaquac bathymetry

Bathymetry of the Mactaquac headpond, NB, by the Ocean Mapping Group at UNB, revealing the former townsite of Culliton, near Nackawic, including its road and rail bridges.

Bathymetry of the Mactaquac headpond, NB, by the Ocean Mapping Group at UNB, revealing the former townsite of Culliton, near Nackawic, including its road and rail bridges.

The Ocean Mapping Group at UNB has released the Mactaquac bathymetry (depth of water) in a wonderful Google Map interface. A Nackawic resident sent it to me this morning with a story of how moving it was to see the former features revealed. I have been waiting a long time to see this, too, and it impresses with crisp 1.66 metre resolution detail. Little sedimentation is evident up against the dam wall, and islands, towns and former river channels remain intact. It will be interesting to navigate it in parallel with our storymap of pre-dam airphotos, to decode some of the more curious shapes. The ‘illumination’ applied to provide a 3D effect has the visual effect of making it look inverted, (i.e. causeway lower than water channels). But this is a marvellous dataset which will enable important visualization work in the consideration of options for the Mactaquac dam.

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