All posts in Data

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 [...]

Exploring the effects of landscape and climate change on White-tailed Deer—and what they might mean for Caribou

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), [...]

Made in Alberta models help continental bird conservation

A new collaborative paper looks at different approaches to estimating population size for birds, and what they mean for how we understand population changes over time. In this guest post, the paper’s lead author and ABMI senior statistical ecologist Péter Sólymos gives us a behind-the-scenes tour. Recently, I worked with a team of researchers from [...]

Field notes from isolation: Data management in a digital world

We understand that many of our readers, like us, are hunkered down as the events around COVID-19 unfold. We hope you’re keeping as well as can be under the circumstances. Meanwhile, ABMI operations continue with a temporary shift of focus away from on-the-ground fieldwork and toward work that can be done digitally. To that end, [...]

Exploring new ways to provide customized biodiversity information

The ABMI is fortunate to have a regular column in the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists’ Quarterly newsletter, BIOS. The following post is adapted from a piece that appeared in the newsletter’s summer issue. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” When he wrote [...]

The down-low on downloading NatureLynx data

After a busy winter, the ABMI’s NatureLynx team is gearing up for an even busier spring and summer as we roll out new functions and welcome new members to the growing NatureLynx community. Community is at the heart of NatureLynx, but today we’re talking about something a little more technical: the data that our community [...]