Monitoring Vegetation Change by Using Remote Sensing: An Examination of Visitor-Induced Impact at Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak along the eastern seaboard in the United States, is a major visitor destination at Acadia National Park. Managing vegetation impact on the summit of Cadillac Mountain is extremely challenging given the number of users and dispersed nature of visitor use at this fragile environmental setting. Since 2000, more intensive management strategies based on placing physical barriers to protect threatened vegetation and leave no trace signs have been employed to reduce vegetation impact and enhance vegetation recovery in the vicinity of the summit loop trail. A number of different change detection techniques and high resolution remote sensing datasets were utilized to identify vegetation impact and recovery from 1979 to 2007. The detection of spatial pattern of vegetation impact and recovery was at a much larger scale than typical recreation ecology studies. Study results showed detailed measurable vegetation regrowth and reduction at distances up to 90 meters from the summit loop trail, indicating overall positive effects in enhancing vegetation recovery in the vicinity of the summit loop trail compared to a nearby control site with similar environmental conditions but no visitor use. As expected, the vegetation recovery was higher as one moved away from the trail itself, and recovery was observed at a higher rate in the intermediate zone where visitor disturbance and ability for sites to regenerate would be higher than more natural variation of regrowth in the outer buffer zone with less visitor activity. It should be noted that overall minimal gains in vegetation regrowth was observed from 2001 to 2007, but compared with the time period of 1979 to 2001 there was more regrowth and less observed vegetation loss but total vegetation has not recovered to 1979 levels. The results also showed that, although with much less resolution than typical recreation ecology studies, vegetation diversity was lower at the experimental site at the level of plant family, suggesting limited success with enhancing vegetation diversity during the analysis time frame. Vegetation change detection using high resolution remote sensing datasets offers an approach for monitoring vegetation change dynamics and to some degree plant diversity, especially for a recreation setting in a sub-alpine environment with limited overstory vegetation such as the case at the summit of Cadillac Mountain. Remote sensing analysis could provide valuable baseline information for future visitorinduced impact monitoring programs and especially for dispersed recreation sites such as Cadillac Mountain

A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011

"... a diverse and fascinating array of perspectives on the history of Canada's national parks, illuminating many less well-understood aspects of the evolving place of people in and near these parks." - Stephen Bocking, Professor and Chair, Environmental and Resource Studies Program, Trent University When Canada created a Dominion Parks Branch in 1911, it became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to managing its national parks. Over the past century this agency, now Parks Canada, has been at the centre of important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood and relationships between Canada's diverse ecosystems and its communities. Today, Parks Canada manages over forty parks and reserves totalling over 200,000 square kilometres and featuring a dazzling variety of landscapes, and is recognized as a global leader in the environmental challenges of protected places. Its history is a rich repository of experience, of lessons learned - critical for making informed decisions about how to sustain the environmental and social health of our national parks. A Century of Parks Canada is published in partnership with NiCHE (Network in Canadian History and Environment; http://niche-canada.org/)

Geo-Information Technology and Its Applications

Geo-information technology has been playing an ever more important role in environmental monitoring, land resource quantification and mapping, geo-disaster damage and risk assessment, urban planning and smart city development. This book focuses on the fundamental and applied research in these domains, aiming to promote exchanges and communications, share the research outcomes of scientists worldwide and to put these achievements better social use. This Special Issue collects fourteen high-quality research papers and is expected to provide a useful reference and technical support for graduate students, scientists, civil engineers and experts of governments to valorize scientific research

Progress in Landslide Research and Technology, Volume 1 Issue 2, 2022

This open access book provides an overview of the progress in landslide research and technology and is part of a book series of the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL). It gives an overview of recent progress in landslide research and technology for practical applications and the benefit for the society contributing to understanding and reducing landslide disaster risk

Climate Change and Environmental Sustainability-Volume 4

Anthropogenic activities are significant drivers of climate change and environmental degradation. Such activities are particularly influential in the context of the land system that is an important medium connecting earth surface, atmospheric dynamics, ecological systems, and human activities. Assessment of land use land cover changes and associated environmental, economic, and social consequences is essential to provide references for enhancing climate resilience and improving environmental sustainability. On the one hand, this book touches on various environmental topics, including soil erosion, crop yield, bioclimatic variation, carbon emission, natural vegetation dynamics, ecosystem and biodiversity degradation, and habitat quality caused by both climate change and earth surface modifications. On the other hand, it explores a series of socioeconomic facts, such as education equity, population migration, economic growth, sustainable development, and urban structure transformation, along with urbanization. The results of this book are of significance in terms of revealing the impact of land use land cover changes and generating policy recommendations for land management. More broadly, this book is important for understanding the interrelationships among life on land, good health and wellbeing, quality education, climate actions, economic growth, sustainable cities and communities, and responsible consumption and production according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We expect the book to benefit decision makers, practitioners, and researchers in different fields, such as climate governance, crop science and agricultural engineering, forest ecosystem, land management, urban planning and design, urban governance, and institutional operation.Prof. Bao-Jie He acknowledges the Project NO. 2021CDJQY-004 supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Project NO. 2022ZA01 supported by the State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, China. We appreciate the assistance of Mr. Lifeng Xiong, Mr. Wei Wang, Ms. Xueke Chen, and Ms. Anxian Chen at School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, China

Annual report of the officers of the town of Piermont, New Hampshire for the year ending December 31, 1990.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Evaluating the use of sustainable approaches for reducing river flooding and erosion in the Upper Trusan River, Sarawak

This thesis summarises work undertaken to address flooding and erosion problems in the upper part of the Trusan catchment, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo (hereafter the ‘Upper Trusan’). The Upper Trusan has been experiencing severe flooding and associated riverbank erosion, both of which affect rice production. This work aimed to identify and evaluate options for reducing the risk and impacts of these phenomena using sustainable ‘green’ approaches. I assessed the suitability of different types of riverbank protection measures (brush walls, brush mattresses, bamboo fencing and geotextile mattresses) as short-term measures for reducing erosion in some of the worst affected areas. In addition, we evaluated opportunities for managed flooding to help reduce flood peaks and attenuate flood waves in the downstream areas. I also assessed the contribution that land use management (especially the conservation of forest cover) could play in minimising flood risk under future land cover scenarios. Local bank protection measures were partly successful. Brush mattresses placed on graded (sloping) banks provided the most protection, lasting longer than other measures. Because of the upland nature of the Trusan, local measures need to withstand frequent high flow forces. Consequently, non-living measures such as bamboo fencing provided only limited and temporary protection from bankfull flows. The assessments indicate that ensuring structures remain living and have adequate toe protection and regular maintenance is essential if they are to be successful. Even so, in high-energy systems such as the Trusan, local measures should not on their own be seen as a long-term solution. Flood modelling using HEC-RAS® indicated that managed inundation of floodplain areas would have very little effect on flood peaks in the Upper Trusan. The main reason for this is that, due to the confined nature of the valley, the floodplain area is relatively small – this limits its capacity to store sufficiently large volumes of water. The models suggested that more or less the whole of the floodplain would need to be allowed to flood in order to affect any significant reduction in flood magnitude. This would defeat the objective of the exercise since the whole area that communities want to protect from flooding would need to be allowed to flood. Thus, there is limited scope for corridor scale management using managed flooding. Satellite-based analysis of land cover in the Upper Trusan suggests that there has been limited forest loss in the last three decades. Catchment scale hydrological modelling using SWAT® indicated that this change has had very little effect on the hydrograph and has not contributed to the reported increased incidence of flooding. However, modelling future land cover change scenarios indicated that significant loss of forest – especially conversion to bare earth – would increase the number of bankfull flood events from 2 to 3 each year. Adoption of Government proposals set out in a land use Master Plan would see up to 35% of the Upper Trusan converted to agriculture. SWAT® modelling suggested that agriculture at this scale would not have a major impact on flooding unless it is accompanied by extensive road systems and built-up areas that would alter hydrological responses to rainfall. Overall, the work suggests that there is little scope for the adoption of managed flooding in the Upper Trusan and that, in this high-energy system, local green bank protection measures should only be seen as a short-term solution to reducing bank erosion. Conservation of natural forests is key to minimising future hydrological changes. The analysis leads to a number of conclusions and recommendations: (i) Local green measures can play a role in protecting riverbanks from erosion. However, emphasis should be on using live materials and ensuring maintenance, so they do not get washed out. In flashy rivers such as the Upper Trusan, a particular challenge is finding sufficiently long-time windows so they can be built and allowed to stabilise before the next high flows. (ii) The opportunity for using floodplains to store water in upland valleys such as the Upper Trusan is constrained by space. This and the likelihood of future climate and land cover change make it imperative that a wider perspective is taken to find a way for communities to become resilient in the long-term. (iii) What is needed now is a full socioeconomic assessment to fully understand rice's contribution to local community incomes and evaluate options for diversifying income sources. This way, communities can become less reliant on the very precarious floodplain rice production. In turn, this will create opportunities for floodplain retreat and the possibility of giving land back to the river, neither of which are possible in the current livelihood model. Such approaches help to conserve the physical integrity of the channel because of how they will reduce the need for perpetual engineering intervention