Remote mapping and characterization of riparian forests and fish habitat potential using advanced remote sensing approaches

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Riparian forests, and the stream habitats within them, are critical important for the sustainable management of Canada's forested ecosystems. Fisheries sensitive watersheds are those designated to be highly important ecologically and once designated, require special forest management activities to ensure that practices undertaken maintain the natural watershed processes and conserve the ecological attributes necessary to protect and sustain fish and their habitat. With advances in remote sensing technology, the potential to derive a suite of stream and riparian zones forest attributes is now possible. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) has been shown to be highly effective for defining accurate and detailed stream networks, as well as for characterizing stream width and gradients, the potential of vegetation to shade and regulate stream temperature and estimate the likelihood of fish habitat. Our long-term research objective is to collaborate with Provincial and Federal forest agencies, as well as forest companies, to promote new tools to map, classify, and analyze streams and associated riparian areas in forested ecosystems. Our ultimate goal is to demonstrate that ALS data can provide accurate characterizations of stream networks and associated riparian vegetation, at markedly greater spatial detail than is possible with current data sources, and that these improved information sources can greatly enhance natural resource management and planning for these stream-riparian systems.