Using Remote Sensing Tools to Enhance the Recovery of Alberta’s Native Trout in the Eastern Slopes
Using high-density lidar to identify and characterize potentially fish-bearing streams.
Forestry companies have surveyed their management areas with lidar and use the data to try to describe the forest cover to aid in harvest plans. This Lidar data can also be used to predict where a stream exists on the landscape. To date, provincial and national stream layers were created with broad, low-resolution Lidar data, but now we have the opportunity to incorporate higher resolution Lidar from forestry companies to better predict where rivers – and critical habitat – exist on the landscape.
The higher resolution virtual watershed will be populated for every Forest Management Area in the eastern slopes from the US border to Grande Prairie, and predict the class of each stream: permanent, semi-permanent, intermediate, etc. These improvements allow for better operations and management around Alberta’s streams and enable researchers to answer more complex questions.
in 2025, Leanna Stackhouse collected the LiDAR and thermal imagery data from each study stream. Stackhouse is a PhD candidate in Dr. Coops’ Integrated Remote Sensing Studio at the University of British Columbia, where her research integrates LiDAR remote sensing with characterizing riparian vegetation and impacts of forest harvesting to streams. We are also working with Dr. Alexis Achim’s Metafor team at l’Université Laval. Information about their group can be found here.
Development of the modeled stream network will be led by Dr. Lee Benda of Terrainworks, the creator of the older, but still widely used, NetMap GIS product. The modeling work is now nearing completion.
Study Areas
Study Area 1 is situated near the town of Hinton, home base for fRI Research. These watersheds include the Upper McLeod, Embarras, and Wildhay, part of the Athabasca watershed, where bull and Athabasca rainbow trout are observed.
Study Area 2 will be situated southwest of Calgary, Locations in this study area includes portions of the Elbow, Bow and Oldman watersheds. Westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout are found in these watersheds.
Additionally, a pilot study is underway in the Simonette River, of the Peace Watershed, home to bull trout and arctic grayling.
Sample LiDAR Outputs
The LiDAR point clouds of three sample transects are shown below, demonstrating the resolution possible with this new technology.
Collecting preliminary LiDAR and thermal imagery data on sites throughout the east slopes to test technology
The UBC and Laval teams collect and process therman and Lidar data in both study areas.
Additional measurements are taken at Sharples Creek prior to the installation of a beaver dam analogue.
