Data · dataset · 2026
Forest Resilience Under Residential Pressure: A Nine-Year Satellite Study of the Southern Gulf Islands, British Columbia.
Listed in Borealis
Coastal island forest ecosystems in British Columbia face increasing pressure from climate-driven stressors, yet the impact of residential fragmentation on their functional resilience remains poorly understood.
Description
This study compared land-use history and ecosystem health on Mudge Island and Link Island in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia using a nine-year time series of Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery (2017–2025).
A supervised Random Forest classification was applied to quantify land cover composition and change, achieving an overall accuracy of 77.7% (Kappa = 0.68). The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated annually for both islands and compared using a Welch's two-sample t-test. Results showed no statistically significant difference in mean vegetation greenness between the two islands (t(15.9) = −0.35, p = 0.733), with a mean NDVI of 0.320 for Mudge Island and 0.303 for Link Island across the study period.
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Forest cover on Mudge Island declined by 11.2 ha between 2018 and 2025, while Non-Forest Vegetation expanded by 25.7 ha. Link Island remained stable across all land cover classes. Neither island showed a measurable decline in vegetation productivity during the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome, indicating high ecological resistance to short-term drought stress.
These findings suggest that residential fragmentation on Mudge Island has not yet reached a threshold that compromises core ecosystem function. Multi-temporal satellite monitoring provides a practical framework for tracking island forest stability over time, with results offering baseline data for land managers working to balance human land use with the preservation of resilient Coastal Douglas-fir forests.
Links
Where it is published
- Dataverse dataset page borealisdata.ca/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi%3A10.5683%2FSP3%2FEGOKIT ↗
landing page · from borealisdata ca
- DOI doi.org/10.5683/sp3/egokit ↗
DOI / persistent id · from borealisdata ca
Catalogue records · 1
- Dataverse API borealisdata.ca/api/datasets/:persistentId/?persistentId=doi%3A10.5683%2FSP3%2… ↗
metadata API · from borealisdata ca
Topics
- Stated by source
- Earth and Environmental Sciences
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Ecological applications 72% · Satellite remote sensing 65%
Provenance · 1 source records, 11 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borealis | doi:10.5683/SP3/EGOKIT | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:4102 | enrichment · borealisdata ca | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (72%) |
| concepts[field].dataverse_subject:earth-and-environmental-sciences | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | /subjects |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | /subjects |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | /subjects |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:remote-sensing | enrichment · borealisdata ca | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (65%) |
| created_date | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | /description |
| publication_date | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | /name |
| updated_date | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 | |
| version_label | source · borealisdata ca | connector:borealisdata_ca@1.0.0 |