Investigating Landscape Change and Ecological Restoration: an Integrated Approach Using Historical Ecology and Gis in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada

Despite remaining some of the most remote and unaltered landscapes in Canada, a combination of human and environmental forces have been continuously transforming the ecosystems of the Canadian Rocky Mountains for millenia. Understanding the magnitude, character, and implications of ecological change over time is challenging, and requires thorough investigation into both human and ecological histories. This research explores such change over the past century in the foothills parkland ecoregion of Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. It examines land cover dynamics, particularly aspen forest dynamics, explores the complex drivers behind these processes, and discusses the critical implications for ecosystem conservation and restoration within the Park. This work highlights the enormous value of utilizing multiple historical and contemporary data sources for inquiries into landscape change. Using historical and repeat survey photography (1914-2004), historical transect records (1889), aerial photography and GIS, this research successfully combines multiple data sources to tease out a nuanced understanding of landscape history with the Park over the past century.