Landowners: Partners in Biodiversity Monitoring in Alberta

In early January, Brandi Mogge, Land Access Manager for the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), headed to southern Alberta from the ABMI’s offices at the University of Alberta in Edmonton on her first trip to visit landowners and request access to their land.  She was prepared to spend her week formally explaining why the ABMI [...]

The World Beneath Our Feet: The Mysterious Nature of Lichens (Part 1/2)

“Without lichens, the world would be bereft of beauty – lichens are the bling, the colour, the contrast in many of our ecosystems, including our urban environments. Beautiful oranges, red sexual structures, geometric patterns on rocks and concrete. And because we’re only just beginning to understand the diversity they harbour, we also don’t know the [...]

Standardized Wildlife Monitoring: A major step forward in harmonization of data collection methods!

For the past several years, the Ecological Monitoring Committee for the Lower Athabasca (EMCLA) has been exploring methods for improving the way we monitor species. One of the EMCLA’s projects has focused on the use of automated recording units (ARU’s) to monitor elusive, vocalizing species such as owls, amphibians, and the Yellow Rail. ARU’s have [...]

MultiTemp 2013: ABMI Prepares for the Canadian Debut of Innovative Remote Sensing Conference

Monitoring change in the Earth’s surface over local, regional, and global scales in a comprehensive, synoptic manner regularly relies on remote-sensing imagery collected from platforms such as airplanes or satellites. The growing archive of currently-accessible satellite imagery, which now covers over four decades, continues to support the increasing need for more accurate and integrated information on [...]

Mountain Pine Beetle has Arrived in Western Alberta – Now What?

by Anne McIntosh Lodgepole pine forests in western Canada are experiencing an unprecedented mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak, and the ecosystem-level effects of ongoing expansion of MPB into novel habitats east of the Canadian Rockies are unknown.  This led me to attempt to better understand the ecological impacts of this new disturbance in lodgepole pine [...]

Figure showing ABMI Land Cover versus high-resolution photography.

Masters Project Enables Efficient Assessment of ABMI Land Cover Product’s Accuracy

Accuracy assessment is an important step in the production of any remote sensing-based map, and was a major component in the production of the ABMI Remote Sensing Group’s Wall-to-Wall Alberta Land Cover Map version 2.1 (circa 2000).  Assessing the accuracy of a province-wide map is no small task, particularly when the map is not a [...]

Business and Biodiversity?

Business and Biodiversity. Two words you don’t often expect to see together. At the ABMI, we understand that functional economies are dependent on functional ecosystems. But, we probably aren’t surprised when we hear the rhetoric that we can’t “afford” to protect the environment when the economy is weak. So, it was heartening for me to [...]

Monitoring Activity Report Available

The ABMI recently produced a Monitoring Activity Report for the Lower Athabasca Planning Region (LAPR) 2011 field season. This report is produced yearly as part of the reporting structure of the Ecological Monitoring Committee for the Lower Athabasca (EMCLA)—a group that partners with the ABMI to ensure monitoring in the region is fulfilling the requirements [...]