436259
Management Area:
Robson
East Kootenay North
Garibaldi South
Application Type:
Summary of Proposed Activity:
The ICY Citizen Science Project is based on the collaborative Coastie citizen science program between Parks Canada, and the University of Waterloo, where citizens contribute to a coastal monitoring database by taking photographs at designated locations. Photographs are taken from posts mounted with smartphone holding brackets, to ensure that each photograph is taken with the same landscape view, in order to accurately compare images through time. ICY will involve the same setup, with posts mounted within the view of a glacier. The accompanying smartphone brackets are being manufactured primarily by Holland College and St.Claire college machine shops, and are driven out or shipped to participating parks.
To accommodate the growing interest in the Coastie project, the University of Waterloo created a dynamic, scalable submission portal. The platform was created using the Django framework and utilizes Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SQL. The platform provides an easy-to-use search feature, allowing users to select an affiliated park and either view additional park details or proceed to submit a Coastie. Both the number of parks and sites are completely fluid, that is they can be added or deleted on the fly once the server is live. Beyond the frontend Coastie offers to the public, there is also a research panel currently under development that is indented to provide select researchers with an analytics dashboard. This platform has proved very useful and accessible for the Coastie program, and will be duplicated for ICY. In saying, the ICY database will have the same functionality and design as the Coastie website and database.
The University of Waterloo will perform base surveys at the 2 aforementioned parks. The field of view for the ICY photograph locations at these parks will be surveyed by using an Unoccupied Aerial Vehicle (UAS) with Real Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) capabilities, and a base station unit to increase accuracy of the UAS survey. Point clouds, orthomosaics, and digital elevation models (DEMs) will be produced using the collected UAS imagery.
Using the geospatial products acquired from the surveys, images will be rectified using the CoastSnap free source Graphical User Interface (GUI) supplied on Github, a web site for the sharing of open sourced programming. The CoastSnap georectification GUI has successfully been used to track shoreline change for the Coastie project. Georectified ICY images will be used to delineate active glaciers, and to study change in landscape composition such as tree line movement and or encroachment into alpine areas. Yearly reports on changes tracked at each study site will be provided to all participating parks.
Term:
5 years
Post Start Date:
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Post End Date:
Monday, September 15, 2025
Permit Type:
Region:
Parks:
Mount Robson Park, Bugaboo Park, Garibaldi Park
Applicant / Permittee:
Elizabeth George
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