CLIENT: Cheam & Sto:lo First Nations
PROJECT OVERVIEW:
PRI has worked with the Cheam and Sto:lo Nations through a joint partnership, Ayelstexw Sustainability Consulting as well as directly on multiple projects including ecosystem mapping and cultural & medicinal plant prediction modeling and other environmental wildlife habitat assessment projects.
APPROACH:
The collaboration with the Nations included elder interviews to gain an understanding of important plant/wildlife species, open houses to obtain feedback/share results, training of Nation members in plant/ecosystem mapping survey and data collection methods.
OUTCOME:
The outcome of the collaboration was a successful ecosystem mapping, cultural & medicinal plant prediction field data collection program, with training of interested first nation members. This collaboration supported a pilot modeling project that used remote sensing data (SRTM DEM, Landsat imagery, terrain indices based on the DEM, climateBC indices), plant data surveys to create 15 plant species abundance classification models. Interested nation members were trained to collect data in a manner to allow the best prediction outcomes, with sub-meter GPS units/iPads. Prediction accuracies ranged from 50% to 79% depending on the number of samples collected for each species.