Wetlands provide numerous benefits to society, including clean and abundant water, flood mitigation, and habitat for wildlife. These benefits have become increasingly apparent, as wetlands are lost across Alberta resulting in greater risk to our infrastructure and biodiversity. Starting with agricultural settlement in southern Alberta, it’s estimated that approximately 64% of wetlands have been permanently [...]
“In 10 years, the ABMI will likely increase our knowledge of Alberta’s Chironomids 10-fold over the previous 200 years. We want to know how effective Chironomids could be in biomonitoring, and we’re right on the doorstep of that kind of information.” – Rob Hinchliffe, Aquatic Invertebrate Taxonomist, Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and the Royal Alberta Museum [...]
“It absolutely makes my day when I can look at a row of numbers and identify patterns that are ecologically meaningful.” – MC Roy, Wetland Ecologist, ABMI From an early age, it seems Marie-Claude Roy was destined to be a wetland ecologist. Now, as the resident wetland ecologist at the ABMI, Marie-Claude, or MC as [...]
Above: Elk Island National Park by Yuyu Yao It’s time to dust off your camera lenses and start snapping images: the ABMI’s second-annual photo contest is back! Help us tell the story of Alberta’s species, habitats and human land use through the most powerful storytelling tool: photography. We want to see what your Alberta looks [...]
The ABMI will wrap-up our 3-year collaborative Biodiversity Management and Climate Change Adaptation project at the end of June 2015. This project has examined the potential impacts of climate change on Alberta’s biodiversity and developed knowledge and tools to support the management of Alberta’s species and ecosystems in a changing climate. We’ve delved into a wide range of topics, including: the vulnerability of [...]
Gathering reliable measurements of animal populations is a long-standing challenge for wildlife biologists around the world. Estimating population size and density requires researchers to count individual specimens; this is an especially difficult task when working with species that move (sometimes over large geographic ranges) or live in difficult-to-traverse landscapes, like Alberta’s Rocky Mountains or its [...]
This story originally appeared in the Alberta Native Plant Council‘s newsletter, Iris, published November 2014. If a botanist went for a walk in the Lower Athabasca region of Alberta, how likely would it be that he would encounter a rare plant species? How long in kilometres or time would she have to walk to find one? If [...]
This story originally appeared in AEMERA’s Newsletter, published March 31, 2015. “The approval holder shall provide a plan or participate in the development of a plan for the monitoring and mitigation of the Yellow Rail (Coturnicops noveboracensis) by [given date] to the satisfaction of the Director…” – Approval condition for oil sands mine project The [...]