Calgary's Stampede Elm may have to make way for a new NHL arena, but it's digitally preserved

The days may be numbered for a massive elm tree that sits on the site of the proposed new home for the Calgary Flames, but the tree has now been preserved digitally to make sure it never gets lost.

The Stampede elm, as it is known, towers above a parking lot just north of existing Saddledome.

But the city and the company that owns the Flames came to a deal last year to demolish theSaddledome and build a new arena just to its north, right where the Stampede elm has stood for more than a century.

That $550-million deal, which city council agreed to in the summer of 2019, one week after the details were made public, is now on pausedue to potential cost overruns.

With the fate of the Stampede elm hanging in the balance, adigital heritage research group from the University of Calgary has tried to preserve the treein a different form athree-dimensional digital archive.

They've used a 3D imager to scan the massive tree. Each scantakes between five and 10 minutes to complete, and it's done from a dozen different locations.

Thenall the images are stitched together to create a digital model foran online archive that can be viewed anywhere in the world.

Madisen Hvidberg, aPhD student who's part of the digital heritage research group, says it's a way to keep the tree alive in some form.

"Our digital scans can help the tree survive virtually, if the physical tree actually dies or is destroyed or has to be relocated," Hvidberg said.

Peter Dawson, another member of the heritage group, says it's a worthwhile project, but the virtual tree is of course not the same as the real thing.

"Being able to touch something, in many ways, conveys its meaning much more effectively than kind of looking at a virtual model or an animation," he said.

Stillthe effort that went into the project shows just how much this tree is valued, said Julie Guimond, anurban forestry lead with the City of Calgary.

The exact age of the tree is unclear but, according to the U of C archive project, it's been standing in that location for roughly 125 years and predates the earliest Calgary Stampede.