Thi Minh Thuy Doan – Geospatial Data Scientist Developing Algorithms for Alberta’s Wetlands and Plains Bison

February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. To celebrate, we are sharing an interview with Thi Minh Thuy Doan (or Thuy, pronounced “Twee”), a Geospatial Data Scientist who has supported our organization with her experience, expertise, and dedication. We asked Thuy to share insights about her professional journey, research interests, [...]

Using Data For Your Projects – Getting the Most Out of the ABMI’s Biodiversity Browser

You might already know that the ABMI’s Biodiversity Browser is a virtual encyclopedia of life in Alberta—with more than 3,000 species profiles of birds, mammals, amphibians, soil mites, vascular plants, lichens, and mosses at your fingertips! But you may not know the many ways the recently updated portal can support research and reporting. The Biodiversity [...]

Exploring the Biodiversity Browser: Alberta’s Encyclopedia of Life

The ABMI is pleased to announce that the Biodiversity Browser (BB) has been updated with new species modelling, new mammal sections, and an updated design to optimize navigation. So, let’s delve a little deeper into what you can find and do on the portal. The ABMI’s Biodiversity Browser is a versatile repository full of freely [...]

Sound Bites: What’s Going On With ABMI Acoustics?

What’s all this noise about acoustics? With support from the Bayne Lab at the University of Alberta, the ABMI has used autonomous recording units (ARUs) and sound technology to monitor the environment for over 10 years. Why ARUs? These robust sensors can be set up and left in the field for months or years, allowing [...]

A Closer Look at Biodiversity Metrics: The Intactness Index

Here at the ABMI, we spend a lot of time thinking about large-scale changes to biodiversity and landscapes across Alberta. A core part of our work asks: what impacts does the human footprint of land use activities (like forestry, energy, agriculture) have in our province? Back in 2007, in our early days of data collection [...]

Applying remote sensing techniques to wide-scale vegetation inventories

The following blog comes to us courtesy of Sydney Toni, summarizing a recent paper in Ecological Solutions and Evidence. Ideally, the information we collect to manage wildlife habitat is many things: high-resolution, consistent, and covering all areas of interest. The gold standard of habitat assessment, ground-based surveys, provides high-quality data at particular locations but can’t cover a [...]

Monitoring Blue-Green Algae Blooms in Alberta from Space

Have you ever gone to visit your favorite Alberta lake for a swim, only to be turned away by a Blue-Green Algae Advisory? Every year, usually in July and August, many of our favorite lakes in Alberta become filled with blue-green algae, and we are told they are unsafe to swim in as a result. [...]

Making WildTrax: It’s (Not) a Kind of Magic – Behind the Screen

WildTrax is one major piece of software–your one-stop online platform for managing, storing, processing, sharing and discovering biological and environmental sensor data. In other words, WildTrax is a repository for data from autonomous recording units (ARUs), remote cameras, and other wildlife surveying methods from across Canada. In fact, WildTrax currently hosts over 66 million photos [...]