February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. To celebrate, all February, we’ll be sharing the stories of some of the many women+ at the ABMI who have shaped our organization with their experience, expertise, and dedication. We are inspired by their hard work and the legacy that they are leaving [...]
New research led by the Caribou Monitoring Unit’s Rob Serrouya, Melanie Dickie and Craig DeMars dives into the potential effects of “global greening” on Alberta’s woodland caribou. In ecosystems across the globe, climate change and habitat alteration are increasing primary productivity in a process that’s been termed “global greening.” While these changes may benefit some [...]
This article first appeared in the winter 2021 issue of BIOS, the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists’ quarterly newsletter, as part of the ABMI’s regular feature. White-tailed deer would rather not have a white Christmas. Or new years. Or any time, really. That’s according to a new paper from the ABMI’s Caribou Monitoring Unit (CMU), [...]
A recent paper highlighted the decline of North American bird populations. Guest blogger Dr. Peter Solymos, a statistical ecologist with the ABMI and Boreal Avian Modelling Project (BAM), digs deeper into the story and provides insights from the long-term ABMI + BAM data set. A paper by Ken Rosenberg et al. in Science made headlines last [...]
A new predictive model using ABMI data suggests that Alberta’s boreal mixedwood forest could decline by at least 50% in the next 100 years due to climate change and wildfire. Change is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s blatantly obvious. Other times, like the old fable of the frog and the boiling water, you only see [...]
The University of Alberta and ABMI’s Bioacoustic Unit was recently featured on CBC’s Radio Active! Listen to Dr. Erin Bayne talk about using ARUs to track vocalizing species across the province, and check out more news coverage here, here, and here!
February 2, 2016 update: The Bioacoustic Unit in the Alberta Farmer Express!
Climate change has been in the news in recent weeks. In November, the provincial Climate Change Advisory Panel released their policy advice to the government in the form of the Climate Leadership Plan. And, this week marks the start of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, where leaders from across the world are convening to review the implementation of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Their goal is to achieve a universal agreement on climate to keep global warming below a 2°C rise from preindustrial levels (check out this infographic for the history of this benchmark).
The ABMI is working to understand climate change impacts on Alberta’s species and ecosystems and identify potential responses through our collaborative Biodiversity Management and Climate Change Adaptation project. In Alberta, we’ve experienced about 1.4°C of warming in Alberta over the last century, so we’re already living with climate change. Planning for continued climate change now (called adaptation) can help to avoid costly reactionary responses to climate change impacts in the future.
Our project was featured by CBC reporter Briar Stewart on the November 29th, 2015 edition of the radio news program The World This Weekend. Listen to hear our University of Alberta collaborators Dr. Scott Nielsen and Dr. Erin Bayne discuss what climate change might mean for the management of biodiversity in Alberta.
To learn more about their projects, check out our recent blog posts on assisted migration of Northern Blazing Star and on adaptation options for the management of Burrowing Owls in Alberta’s grasslands.
The Biodiversity Management and Climate Change Adaptation project received core funding from the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation.
No one likes the idea of wildlife being trapped between a rock and a hard place, but new research is showing that this may be the situation faced by bumblebees in warming temperatures. A study published recently in the journal Science [1] has drawn attention to the negative impacts of climate change on bumblebees in [...]