On your next walk in a forest, park, or community, you might notice some interesting trees and plants, perhaps even a few birds or squirrels scurrying around, but chances are you won’t think much about the vast amounts of water below your feet. This water, known as groundwater, resides between the cracks and crevices of [...]
NatureCounts, a program of Birds Canada, is one of the world’s largest biodiversity data repositories. It collects and archives data from hundreds of citizen science and research projects, then makes that data available and accessible to anyone working towards the conservation of birds and their habitats. Currently, over 235 million records—mostly (but not entirely) of [...]
The ABMI’s new Online Reporting for Biodiversity tool provides easy access to both land use and biodiversity information for Alberta with a user-friendly interface. The Online Reporting for Biodiversity (ORB) tool is the ABMI’s recently released multi-use tool for easily generating biodiversity reports for Alberta. The ORB tool, the first of its kind for the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]