Innovation Anthology #17: Principal Investigator, Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience
With all the development in Alberta, the human footprint on the landscape is becoming very heavy.
Over time, the amount of forest cut down for seismic lines, well sites, roads, and utility corridors adds up. The cumulative impacts can spell disaster for wildlife and their habitat.
One man who is making a difference is Dr. Brad Stelfox.
A biologist by training, he developed a computer program called ALCES. ALCES is short for A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator.
BS:ALCES is a computer based simulation model that helps Albertans’ keep track of landuse practices and understand how land use transforms landscapes, and generates jobs and revenues and flows of various commodities like wood, water, fibre and agricultural products. But also looks at some of the challenges these cause for the environment by industrial use or wildlife habitat.
With ALCES, Dr. Stelfox has helped companies with competing interests on the landbase to redesign their projects – thereby lessening their environmental footprint, and often saving money,
ALCES is now being used as a planning tool for water, agriculture, and community development.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY, I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Robert Sutherland, PhD,
University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, robert.sutherland@uleth.ca
Sponsor
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management
The Integrated Landscape Management Chair is developing a toolkit for ecologically informed land use planning. At the heart of this toolkit is a suite of models capable of integrating multiple land use activities over large areas and long time scales to explore the future impacts of todays land use decisions. The models do this by linking human actions to indicators of ecological, economic, and social condition. They are constrained by their ability to adequately represent the dynamics of complex systems, and our current research emphasis aims to reduce the uncertainties over the impacts of invasive organisms on species at risk in Canadas boreal forest.
The ILM Chair is an initiative of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, with sponsors and collaborators in academia, government, and the private sector.
Program Date: 2007-03-13