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Timelapse wood monitoring network - Fort Fitzgerald

Abstract

Timelapse wood monitoring raw image data from Fort Fitzgerald Camera located near the Slave River at Fort Fitzgerald water gauge 7NB001, operated by Water Survey Canada. Camera located at: WGS84 59.868923 N 111.582301 W.

Description

This project aims to qualitatively describe and quantitatively estimate volumes of driftwood that are exported to the Arctic Ocean through the Mackenzie River Basin in northern Canada. Work from this project has been featured in a National Geographic blog (http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/25/stunning-ways-driftwood-builds-landscapes/) Questions and inquiries about this project can be sent to Natalie Kramer (n.kramer.anderson@gmail.com). A promotional video of this research can be viewed here (http://hdl.handle.net/10217/172978).
The impacts of large amounts of driftwood on waterscapes - ecological and physical - are absolutely stunning both in scale and in aesthetics. In rivers draining the mostly undammed Mackenzie basin in Canada, landscape features associated with wood are abundant and reflect conditions that were likely more common in northern latitudes world-wide for the last 10,000 years up to about 200 years ago. As the world's last free flowing rivers are rapidly dammed for hydropower, we seek (eventually) to answer: how will diminishing transport of driftwood impact the biodiversity of river corridors and marine environments? How much more at risk are wood depleted coastlines from erosion associated with sea level rise and extreme weather? And, what impact will wood depletion have on freshwater and marine fisheries?
Department of Geosciences

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Associated Publications

Kramer, Natalie, Great River Wood Dynamics in Northern Canada. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation), Colorado State University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10217/176648