The Mountain Legacy Project: Exploring 150 Years of Landscape Change in the Canadian Mountain West

 
 

Editor’s Note - Early surveying efforts in Canada left us with a large database of high-quality images, dating back as far as 1861. The Mountain Legacy Project has been using these images to explore change in Canada’s mountain landscapes. By comparing old images to new ones taken from the same vantage, the MLP is able to document and display changes in our landscape, in such things as glaciers, treelines and wildfire habits.

This article first appeared in the ACC's 2018 State of the Mountains Report. We'll continue to publish articles exploring the science of the current state of Canada's alpine on our blog throughout the year. Find them all here.

This B&W plate was taken in 1913 by A.O. Wheeler and crew as part of the Inter-Provincial Boundary Survey between Alberta and British Columbia. It was taken on a ridge below Nub Peak and looks over Magog Lake to the Mt. Assiniboine massif. Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives (LAC/BAC) Canada and the Mountain Legacy Project. Check out http://explore.mountainlegacy.ca/stations/261 for the location and an overlay view of this image repeated in 2010.

Stepping back in time with the Mountain Legacy Project

For 20 years the Mountain Legacy Project (MLP; mountainlegacy.ca), based at the University of Victoria in the School of Environmental Studies, has been using repeat photography to explore change in Canada’s mountain landscapes. Utilizing historical photographs of remarkable fidelity, MLP teams seek to determine the photo locations, go to the same place, and rephotograph the images as accurately as possible. The historic and modern images are then aligned, analyzed, used by MLP for research, and made available to scholars, students, government agencies, the public at large – in fact, anyone interested in exploring Canada’s mountain heights.

Working with long-running partner Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (LAC/BAC), UVic Libraries, the Canadian Mountain Network, and other agencies and organizations, MLP researchers endeavour to understand how and why mountain ecosystems, landscapes, and human communities change over time. Key project funding and engagement comes from the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

A 2017 panorama taken from The Towers summit showing the eastern side of lofty Mt. Assiniboine, Gloria, Eon, and Aye Peaks (L-R), and the amphitheatre above Gloria Lake. Mt. Terrapin is the broad, triangular summit in the centre right. Panorama courtesy of Mary Sanseverino and MLP.

Mountains of information and repeated photographs

With approximately 120,000 historic photos, almost all of which are glass plate negatives, Canada is home to the world’s largest collection of systematic historic mountain imagery. Most of the ranges in BC, Alberta, and the Yukon have extensive coverage. The earliest photographs date back to 1861 and are from the Canada/USA International Boundary Commission survey along the 49th parallel. But the vast majority come from topographic mapping efforts carried out between 1888 and the 1950s. Most of the images are held at LAC/BAC in Gatineau, Quebec, the BC Archives in Victoria, and the Whyte Museum in Banff.

As of 2017 MLP teams have repeated over 7,000 of these photographs. The image pairs, along with thousands of as yet unrepeated historic photos, are published in searchable format online at explore.mountainlegacy.ca. Since its inception MLP researchers have developed and improved techniques for acquiring the modern retakes, for curating and analyzing the image pairs, and for publishing the results.

What the photos tell us

MLP has informed many research projects over the years, which means that selecting just a few landscape change themes is never easy. However, the following are evident in many image pairs:

Figure 1: Dramatic loss of glacial ice on the Athabasca Glacier.

Figure 2: Historic and modern images segmented into classification categories. Each category is shown as a percentage in a given image. The intersection of categories between images indicates what has remained the same in the intervening 94 years. For example, 16% of the snow and ice category is in the same place in the 20111 image as it is in the 1917 photo.

1). Loss of glaciation. Figure 1[i] shows the Athabasca Glacier. The loss of ice between A.O. Wheeler’s 1917 and MLP’s 2011 image is startling. Figure 2 is based upon the same images, but demonstrates an analysis with MLP’s Image Analysis Toolkit, which was developed to help researchers better visualize and quantify change between and within image pairs[ii].

2). Alpine Treeline Ecotone (ATE) advance. Figure 3 from east of the Highwood Ranges in southern Alberta shows trees infilling and the treeline moving upslope. As past MLP research has shown, there are many questions around the mechanisms driving ATE advance and the changes it brings to alpine ecosystems[iii].

Figure 3: Notice how the treeline has changed in these images.

Figure 4: Notice how the density of trees has increased in the modern image.

3). Infilling and encroachment of vegetation – especially conifers. The forest in Figure 4 surrounds Magog Lake and the Mt. Assiniboine massif. The 2017 image shows a much denser forest – a possible wildfire concern in a warming world.

4). Evidence of wildfire on the landscape. Figure 5 from King Creek Ridge in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, shows how fire – possibly from the big 1910 fire season – has moved on the ridge.

Figure 5: Notice how the fire burned both the west and east slopes (right and left) in the centre of the image but jumped the top of the ridge.

The Mountain Legacy Project evolves to reflect new questions and interests of concern to the research community and all those concerned with mountains. We look forward to new partnerships and projects that make use of these internationally distinctive collections.

Mary Sanseverino is a Research Associate with the Mountain Legacy Project. Eric

Eric Higgs is a Professor at the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria.

[i] All historic images are provided courtesy of LAC/BAC and MLP. All modern images are courtesy of MLP.

[ii] See Sanseverino, M. E., Whitney, M. J., & Higgs, E. S. (2016). Exploring Landscape Change in Mountain Environments with the Mountain Legacy Online Image Analysis Toolkit. Mountain Research and Development, 36(4). http://doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-16-00038.1 for an overview of the visualization tool.

[iii] See Roush, W. M. (2009). A Substantial Upward Shift of the Alpine Treeline Ecotone in the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains. University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://dspace.library.uvic.ca//handle/1828/2031 for an in-depth analysis.

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Canada’s wilderness is a diminishing and irreplaceable resource of great intrinsic value, not only to those who recreate in its spaces, but to everyone on our planet. The Environment Fund is a permanent fund to be used to create a legacy of environmental improvement.

The Environment Fund provides financial support each year to projects related to the preservation of alpine and Arctic environments, and climbing areas in Canada. Your donation goes directly to these projects.

 
 
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