Landscape Changes in the Tombstone Territorial Park region (central Yukon, Canada) from Multi-Level Remote Sensing Analysis

Abstract

Northern ecosystems are vulnerable to surface disturbances caused by warming climate and human activities. The Ogilvie Mountains in central Yukon are an important region that should be monitored, as it is a major transportation corridor connecting northern communities. This study aims to characterize 35 years of landscape changes in the Tombstone Territorial Park and the surrounding region of the Ogilvie Mountains by detecting and interpreting landscape changes using a Landsat-derived trend analysis and multi-level image interpretation. Statistically significant spectral changes occurred in 24% of the study area between 1986 and 2021, and most of these changes are gradual and associated with vegetation succession and hydrological processes (i.e., erosion and deposition). Other landscape changes included wildfires, slumps, changes to riverbanks and lake shores, earlier melting of icings in the summer, degradation on the peripheries of some ice-wedge polygonal terrain, and potential insect damage to forests. Our investigation reveals that the extent and magnitude of landscape changes in the study area are influenced by climate, geomorphic setting, ecological succession, and glacial history of the region. Given a varied combination of ecotypes, spatial and temporal variations are to be expected in terms of the response of the landscape to climate and anthropogenic disturbances.