The project focuses on the area in the Slave River Delta, located at the mouth of the Slave River, on the south shore of the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories.  Although the 200 km2 of the delta is relative small in size, it is a biologically important wetland.  Annually, three of the four major continental flyways cross over the delta.  Therefore, the delta provides feeding, staging and breeding grounds for between 40,000 to 200,000 waterfowl.  The Slave River deltaic region is extremely sensitive, slight environmental disruption of the delta would have adverse economic and biological ramifications especially to nearby villages.  Therefore, it is important that research be conducted on the development of the vegetation as it is indicative of the overall environmental change in the area.

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the vegetation changes in the Slave River Delta.  This is accomplished by comparing the changes in the vegetation from a 1979 analogue vegetation map with our results derived from analyzing the year 2000 remotely sensed imagery.  Therefore, it is necessary to develop a methodology to meet the following four objectives.  The first objective would be to develop a strategy to compare the archival study to the satellite imagery.  Secondly, we have to interpret the remotely sensed data using ground truth from 1979.  Thirdly, several classification methods must be employed, in order to compare them.  Thus, general trends are revealed in the recent vegetation distribution and then conclusion can be drawn.  Finally, the Modifiable Areal Unit problem (MAUP) will also be addressed by examining the classification results in different resolutions.