All posts in Data

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 [...]

Making Waves – Jenet Dooley, Wetland Ecologist

Jenet Dooley defies labels (except for being a self-described “long-time swamp monster”). Yes, technically she is a wetland ecologist, but to Jenet, that title doesn’t adequately describe the interplay between the evolving nuances of ecology and the project management and coordination of monitoring programs. Like wetlands themselves, Jenet is hard to pin down, and she [...]

Meet Alberta’s Wetland Atlas

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of the Wetland Atlas of Alberta, a first-of-its-kind effort to present the results of our wetland monitoring programs in an integrated, interactive, Open-Access online report. This comprehensive new resource includes province-wide inventories of wetland habitat developed by the ABMI and data collected by the ABMI [...]

Making it Look Easy – Joan Fang, Senior Systems Analyst

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 [...]

Dr. Elly Knight, ABMI’s New Statistical Ecologist

Dr. Elly Knight is the ABMI’s new Statistical Ecologist and resident bird expert. Elly is also much more than that. She’s an ornithologist, research scientist, data lover, advocate for the Common Nighthawk, citizen science pioneer, storyteller, and mother, to name a few. Today is International Women’s Day, and we celebrate the over 40 unique women [...]

A new Wetland Inventory for Alberta

We’re pleased to announce the release of the ABMI Alberta-wide Wetland Inventory—our most up-to-date and high-resolution wetland data yet. Several years in the making, this work would not have been possible without the generous support of Alberta Environment and Parks, or the rapid advance of remote-sensing technologies. Thanks to the availability of incredible open-source data [...]

Announcing the launch of our new, enhanced Mapping Portal

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our brand-new Mapping Portal, featuring new data layers, more functions, and an enhanced user interface—all inspired by feedback from you, our users. Planned as a tool for directly viewing and interacting with the ABMI’s species and geospatial data, the original Mapping Portal was launched in 2017 as part [...]