Eric Higgs
ehiggs.bsky.social
Eric Higgs
@ehiggs.bsky.social

Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, Author of Nature By Design and director of the Mountain Legacy Project. .. more

Eric Stowe Higgs is a Canadian ecologist. He is a professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Trained in ecology, philosophy, and environmental planning, his work concerns ecological restoration, historical ecology, intervention ecology, and the changing character of life in technological society. He also works with the Mountain Legacy Project as the Principal Instigator. .. more

Environmental science 64%
Geography 18%
Informed, inspiring text. Beautiful, illuminating pix.

Congratulations, @ehiggs.bsky.social, Zac Robinson, @msanseve.bsky.social, Kristen Walsh, & @mountainlegacy.bsky.social!

@ucalgarypress.bsky.social & @nichecanada.bsky.social

press.ucalgary.ca/books/978177...

Reposted by Stephen D. Murphy

It’s out and it’s beautiful. Mountain Voices featuring photographs from @mountainlegacy.bsky.social went on sale Friday evening at our launch event at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff.

Reposted by Eric Higgs

The MLP recently provided images for the short film Embers, which premiered this past week at the Banff Film and Book Festival!

This short animated video from the production shows the dramatic change in the Athabasca Glacier from 1917 to 2011:

tinyurl.com/EmberVideo

Trailer:
vimeo.com/1131446093
Embers Official Trailer
After losing her home in the 2024 Jasper wildfire, aerial artist Sasha Galitzki is forced to reckon with catastrophic changes to her mountain home. Short documentary…
vimeo.com

Reposted by Eric Higgs

Today we are highlighting an excerpt from the latest book in our Canadian History & Environment series with @ucalgarypress.bsky.social, Mountain Voices, in collaboration with the Alpine Club of Canada

"Prospector’s-Russell Col, Mount Logan" by Alison Criscitiello

niche-canada.org/2025/11/06/p...
Prospector’s-Russell Col, Mount Logan
Facing frostbite or storm entrapment, Alison Criscitiello chose frostbite, later returning to Mount Logan for ice-core research revealing past climate secrets.
niche-canada.org

Reposted by Marcus Collier

Very happy to report the first glimpse at the new identity for our research group—EcoVisualization Studio—which combines @mountainlegacy.bsky.social with CEDAR (Co-Lab for Ecological Design And Restoration). More soon!

Reposted by Eric Higgs

Well gang, it's happened: OpenAI has built a platform filled exclusively with fake, AI content.

I've been playing with it for a few days, and I think it's safe to say we're basically kissing reality goodbye.

Here's the story: www.npr.org/2025/10/03/n...

And some thoughts 🧵

Reposted by Eric Higgs

We are hiring!
Applications are open for an Assistant. Prof. In Plant #Biodiversity and #Conservation at Trinity College, School of Natural Sciences in the Discipline of Botany! my.corehr.com/pls/trrecrui...
Any enquiries, please DM me!
#academicjobs #universityjobs #environmentalscience

Very happy to announce the book, Mountain Voices, will be published in early November by @ucalgarypress.bsky.social. Fifty authors explore their love of Canadian mountains through interpreting photographs from @mountainlegacy.bsky.social. press.ucalgary.ca/books/978177... Order early!
Mountain Voices: The Mountain Legacy Project and a Century of Change in Western Canada
Discover Canada’s mountains as you’ve never seen them before with gorgeous photography from the Mountain Legacy Project accompanied by gripping essays from mountaineers, artists, and mountain research...
press.ucalgary.ca

Jeanine Rhemtulla and I are presenting “The Mountain Legacy Project as a Platform for Understanding Fire the Canada Wildfire webinar series at 08:30 Friday Sept 12. Free to register. Please join us. www.canadawildfire.org/webinarsandc...

@mountainlegacy.bsky.social
Canada Wildfire - Webinars and courses
Our webinars feature leading experts discussing a range of topics related to wildfires. Whether you're a researcher, practitioner, or simply interested in learning, our platform provides a space for d...
www.canadawildfire.org

All great suggestions but I feel your pain on volume of applications. Do you have threshold criteria—achievement and practical—that can filter the applications? This step can be undertaken by someone else without compromising the integrity of the process. This makes your job more tractable.

Very pleased work with Drs. Jeanine Rhemtulla and Lori Daniels and students on the 2024 Jasper wildfires to be featured in the New York Times today. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/w...
In a Mammoth Wildfire’s Remains, Clues to Tame Future Blazes
www.nytimes.com

Big thanks to PhD student, Claire Wright, who managed the fieldwork, & Wildfire Canada, and Jasper National Park for great support. Great to work alongside UBC faculty Jeanine Rhemtulla & Lori Daniels. We were delighted to have artist/photographer Desirée Patterson and writer Jesse Winter join us.

Wrapped up a very successful field season with @mountainlegacy.bsky.social. We repeat high resolution oblique photographs in some case for the fourth time creating a sequence from 1915 to the present including before and after photos of the 2024 Jasper Wildfire Complex.

Reposted by Eric Higgs

Peering Into the Past Century of Mountain Diversity Change by Uniting Two Modes of Remote Sensing. New from @juliefortin.bsky.social, @random-blackbear.bsky.social & @ehiggs.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #ornithology

I had the pleasure of working with 16 fine students in the School of Environmental Studies @uvic.ca and in our Restoration of Natural Systems Program. They delivered insights for the community on six research projects that key into priorities of the galianoconservancy.org

Heading to the Millard Learning Centre on Galiano Island to teach my annual “advanced principles and practices in ecological restoration” course. Ten days of good work with 16 @uvic.ca students culminating in presentations to the Galiano community! galianoconservancy.ca/event/uvic-s...
UVic Student Presentations | Galiano Conservancy
You are cordially invited to join us at the Millard Learning Centre classroom on Saturday July 12, 2025, 4:00pm-5:30pm, for a public talk by UVic Environmental Studies and Restoration of […]
galianoconservancy.ca

After some technical hiccups over the last few months the @mountainlegacy.bsky.social Stories series is back! Please check out the latest post by Alia Johnson on connecting work with repeat photography to ecological design. mountainlegacy.ca/2025/06/30/o...

Pls subscribe! mountainlegacy.ca/news/
On Historical Photographs, Regenerative Ecological Design, and the Value of Collaboration
By Alia Johnson Beyond being a powerful tool for understanding large-scale landscape change over time, historical photographs provide profound insights as a decision-making tool for the designe...
mountainlegacy.ca

Julie Fortin delivers on innovative use of repeat photography for tracking songbird diversity in a mountain landscape. Research done while a MSc student in the School of Environmental Studies @uvic.ca
Peering Into the Past Century of Mountain Diversity Change by Uniting Two Modes of Remote Sensing. New from @juliefortin.bsky.social, @random-blackbear.bsky.social & @ehiggs.bsky.social: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #ornithology
This paper is exactly what we need!! Congratulations team!
A preprint of our paper on #CausalInference in #Ecology - Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - led by Hannah Correia is now up as a preprint ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... 🧪🌍

This came from a GREAT workshop last year, and gives a solid framework and howto
A preprint of our paper on #CausalInference in #Ecology - Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - led by Hannah Correia is now up as a preprint ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... 🧪🌍

This came from a GREAT workshop last year, and gives a solid framework and howto

Disseration available: dspace.library.uvic.ca/items/9be840...
Based on two recent publications and more to come.
The emergence of novel disturbance in Jasper National Park – evaluating the causes and implications of 100 years of landscape change using repeat photography
Recurring disturbance has a strong influence on the bounds of ecosystem variability. The concept historical range of variability (HRV) describes these bounds, providing a sense of the range of ecosystem characteristics exhibited in response to disturbance and recovery over time and space. Altered and novel disturbances can drive changes in ecosystem composition and configuration that depart from the HRV and lead to regimes shifts. In Jasper National Park, a systematic set of historical and repeated oblique photographs depict montane landcover in the aftermath of extensive fires in 1915 and a mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak in 2020/22. However, the MPB disturbance is historically unprecedented, and raises important questions about whether the characteristics of this event are within the HRV of the montane ecosystems. The focus of this dissertation is to apply a new workflow for deriving landcover maps from oblique photographs to evaluate the landcover changes that have occurred in the park’s montane ecoregion over the last 105 years. The workflow comprises a deep learning algorithm that automates the classification of landcover evident in grayscale and color oblique photographs and a georeferencing tool that incorporates these data into a GIS. I report on the accuracy of the data produced by the workflow (Chapter 2) and quantify the changes in composition and configuration of broad landcover types after the two disturbance events for a study area in the montane ecoregion (Chapter 3). A scenario planning exercise is then undertaken to evaluate the uncertainty surrounding the implications of these changes and the potential for future novel disturbance events (Chapter 4). Georeferencing accuracy using root-mean-square error for a subset of 7 images was 4.6 m and overall classification accuracy for the landcover map produced from oblique photographs using the new workflow was 68%. The change analysis in the montane ecoregion indicated that the MPB outbreak has returned a version of heterogeneity evident in 1915 to the landscape by reducing the dominance of mature conifer (both in composition and configuration) across the landscape. Four scenarios then describe alternative futures in the park based on different levels and combinations of ecological novelty and management intervention. The value of this research is to validate the development of a new workflow for analyzing historical and repeat photographs, increase the temporal depth of ecological monitoring in the park, and allow managers and restoration practitioners to develop a better understanding of how and where novel disturbance is altering ecological processes and could reoccur in the future.
dspace.library.uvic.ca

Very proud of newly-minted PhD, Dr. James Tricker. His dissertation helped develop new tools for classifying, analyzing, and geo-referencing oblique images. His work focused on a critical look at historical range of variability in light of emergent ecological novelty in Jasper National Park.

Reposted by Eric Higgs

🚨Just learned that the next book in our @nichecanada.bsky.social Canadian History and Environment series with @ucalgary.bsky.social, edited by @alanmaceachern.bsky.social, will drop in November 🚨

Mountain Voices: The Mountain Legacy Project…

#envhist

@ehiggs.bsky.social @msanseve.bsky.social

Very proud of PhD student, Alia Johnson, who was awarded a prestigious Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This makes a perfect streak for the five Canadian PhD students working with me now (int’l students not eligible for this award).

Another instalment of our “10 Questions” blog series @mountainlegacy.bsky.social This one features PhD student, Claire Wright. Check out the photo looking down the gully of Chak Peak in Jasper National Park! mountainlegacy.ca/2025/05/05/1...
10 Questions with Claire Wright
Welcome back to another episode of "10 Questions." From post-doctoral fellows to research assistants, each person has been asked to share their unique perspectives, experiences and stories by respondi...
mountainlegacy.ca
How do we move forward with the novel ecosystem concept? Some deep and exciting conversations happening at the symposium hosted by @noveleco.bsky.social #NovelEcosystems
I am delighted to be hosting my first global symposium. Three days of discussions on the future of the novel ecosystem concept and novel ecosystems of the future. Exciting publications to follow! Part of the @noveleco.bsky.social project #novelecosystems #TrinityResearch #ERCResearch

Thanks Matt Ponford for BBC article focusing on Hawai’i and profoundly changed ecosystems. Shout out to @jcsvenning.bsky.social @lauralgovers.bsky.social and others mentioned in the article. BTW, “freakosystem” was coined by my young daughter circa 2011. www.bbc.com/future/artic...
This Hawaiian island's 'freakosystems' are a warning from the future
Ecosystems which have never been seen before are being accidentally created by humans. They offer a stark look into the nature of tomorrow.
www.bbc.com

We argue for a flexible and adaptable version of future restoration (Restoration 3.0) that comes to grips with increasing ecological novelty and bionovelty. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/15...

Our article on “bionovelty,” examines intersecting drivers of technological change for restoration (and conservation). It is difficult to gauge the implications of any single technology let alone an ensemble. This article searches for pattern. doi.org/10.1111/rec....
Bionovelty and ecological restoration
Anthropogenic activity has irreparably altered the ecological fabric of Earth. The emergence of ecological novelty from diverse drivers of change is an increasingly challenging dimension of ecosystem....
doi.org