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With increasing development of resources and transportation systems in areas of permafrost in Canada, the need for efficient and effective landslide hazard assessment in northern regions is greater now than ever. Furthermore, most climatological models suggest an accelerating warming trend for the region, along with more extreme climatic events, which would lead to increased landslide frequency. This project was undertaken to identify and characterize landslide processes in an area of discontinuous permafrost and to develop methods of landslide susceptibility mapping. The project includes 1:50 000 scale terrain evaluation mapping, detailed field-based landslide characterization, landslide inventory mapping, and...
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Forest encroachment has been documented across North America, from British Columbia to New Mexico, and is a growing concern due to loss of essential grassland habitat. Climate change, fire suppression, changes in grazing regimes, and differences in microclimate between topographic gradients are the main factors associated with forest encroachment into grasslands. Small-scale factors, such as competition and facilitation also play an important role in forest-grassland dynamics. I examined forest-grassland dynamics in southwest Yukon through dendroecological techniques and repeat image analysis. Dendroecological techniques were used to identify periods of tree encroachment, changes in age structure, pulses of tree...
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Forest encroachment has been documented across North America, from British Columbia to New Mexico, and is a growing concern due to loss of essential grassland habitat. Climate change, fire suppression, changes in grazing regimes, and differences in microclimate between topographic gradients are the main factors associated with forest encroachment into grasslands. Small-scale factors, such as competition and facilitation also play an important role in forest-grassland dynamics. I examined forest-grassland dynamics in southwest Yukon through dendroecological techniques and repeat image analysis. Dendroecological techniques were used to identify periods of tree encroachment, changes in age structure, pulses of tree...
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Recent temperature compilations suggest that 20th century temperatures have been anomalously high in some regions of the world, especially in the context of the last several hundred years. Increases in anthropogenically produced greenhouse gases are believed to be the primary cause behind the warmer temperatures during the 20 th century. Because instrumental temperature records are normally very short, they are insufficient for assessing the impact of anthropogenic activity on climate. Therefore, knowledge of past climatic variation across longer timescales is needed to assess the natural variability of climate and to determine how vegetation may respond to further warming during the next century. This thesis investigates,...
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Forest encroachment has been documented across North America, from British Columbia to New Mexico, and is a growing concern due to loss of essential grassland habitat. Climate change, fire suppression, changes in grazing regimes, and differences in microclimate between topographic gradients are the main factors associated with forest encroachment into grasslands. Small-scale factors, such as competition and facilitation also play an important role in forest-grassland dynamics. I examined forest-grassland dynamics in southwest Yukon through dendroecological techniques and repeat image analysis. Dendroecological techniques were used to identify periods of tree encroachment, changes in age structure, pulses of tree...
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