The study area for this project is located within the Eigg Mtn – James River Wilderness Protected Area in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. The area is approximately 300 ha in size and has a very mixed land use history.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the area was predominantly agricultural, having been settled for some time by Scottish imigrants. In 1878, Ambrose F. Church completed a series of map outlining the topography and communities of Nova Scotia. Churches map shows a number of families and a schoolhouse in the Browns Mountain area, indicating the existence of a thriving community at the time.

A.F. Church’s Map (1878)

Beginning in the early 1900’s the farmland in the area began to be abandoned. A report by Bernard E. Fernow in 1912 (Forest Conditions of Nova Scotia) suggests that there was some active agricultural land in the Browns Mountain area at the time, although the exact extent of this is not well documented.

B.E. Fernow’s Map (1912)

Aerial photography of the region dates from 1945 to 1997. Images were acquired for 1945, 1954, 1964, 1971, 1979, 1991 and 1997. These images were scanned and georeferenced in a GIS to enduring ground features, in this case, roads. Areas of recently abandoned farmland (predominantly young white spruce and open field) are easily discerned in the 1945 imagery. In imagery from successive years, areas of continued forest growth, as well as forest harvesting are able to be discerned. These areas are in turn digitized into new GIS layers, and used for further analysis.