All posts in Human Footprint

Bird declines in North America: a deeper dive using long-term ABMI and BAM data

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 [...]

New collaborative research in the race to save Woodland Caribou

Woodland caribou populations in Alberta and BC are declining, and many will be lost without fast management action. To stem the decline in local population loss, intensively applying a cocktail of management actions is more effective than applying actions weakly or alone. These are some of the key conclusions of a new study just published [...]

Seeking (and finding!) ALPHA

Content for this post, by Evan DeLancey and Kurt Illerbrun, is adapted from an ABMI feature that recently appeared in the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists’ newsletter, BIOS. If you’re interested in learning more about ALPHA, the ABMI will be presenting a webinar on the topic on February 28—register for free here. One of the [...]

A Deeper Dive into Human Footprint in Alberta

The ABMI recently released a new report on the status of human footprint in Alberta. Depending on your particular interests, you were probably struck by different aspects of the report—maybe the fact that 78% of central Alberta is now under human footprint, or the fact that in the Athabasca Oil Sands Area, that number is [...]

Alberta’s Ecosystems Shrinking Faster than the Amazon Rain Forest? Not True!

On February 7, 2018, the ABMI released a new report on human footprint in Alberta. While some media outlets provided well-informed, balanced coverage of the report, others resorted to sensationalist headlines that unfortunately misrepresented the report’s key findings. The following is the ABMI’s response to this inaccurate coverage. By Jim Herbers and Tara Narwani; Alberta [...]

ABMI Releases Preliminary Report on the Status of Human Footprint in Alberta

Between 1999 and 2015, human activity in Alberta visibly converted over 23,000 square kilometres of native ecosystems into residential, recreational, or industrial landscapes, an area 3.5 times the size of Banff National Park. Feb 9 Update: This report received extensive coverage in the media. While some media outlets provided well-informed, balanced coverage, others resorted to [...]

Who is the ABMI? Get to know Jerome Cranston, GIS Analyst

While other children were reading comic books, Jerome Cranston was poring over atlases of the world. As a child he also spent many hours in the air getting a bird’s eye view of Canadian landscapes from the cockpit of his father’s plane. “I really need a picture to understand something,” says Cranston, a GIS1 Analyst [...]

Mapping Portal

New Data & Analytics Portal Launched!

Albertans have a new resource at their fingertips that provides detailed information on hundreds of Alberta’s plant and animal species. Welcome to the ABMI’s new online Data & Analytics Portal—a one-stop-shop that provides easy access to our extensive biodiversity-related data, reports, and maps. A key part of the Data & Analytics Portal is the ABMI [...]