Earlier this month, the ABMI was able to release the 2011 data. The 2011 season contributed data from 134 terrestrial sites, 140 wetland sites, and 95 winter tracking sites to the ABMI’s database. This impressive addition includes information on over 1600 species—half of these species are vascular plants. 2011 sites were found across much of the [...]
The 10th annual Prairie Conservation and Endangered Species Conference (PCESC) is being held this upcoming February 19-22nd in Red Deer. The conference is held in Alberta every 3rd year (it rotates between Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba annually), and is being organized by the Alberta Prairie Conservation Forum and the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists. The [...]
The Annual Report for 2011-2012 has been released and is available online. 2011-2012 was a great year for the ABMI. It was a year of growth. There was a 51% increase in total specimens identified over 10/11, as well as a 32% increase in the number of core sites surveyed (42% increase including off-grid sites) [...]
Though somewhat bittersweet, our crews are very excited to report a successful end to the 2012 field campaign. Our team lead, Sande Dalton, reminisces fondly about the sunny days hiking through Alberta’s northern boreal forest and nights of camping at beautiful Christina Lake. Other crew members included Chun Hua Zhang, Riley Iwamoto, and Lauren Peters. [...]
Finally, “A Day in the Life of an ABMI Terrestrial Crew” is online. It shows a typical day monitoring in southern Alberta with some examples of biodiversity we found in the field. (Here is a link to a slideshow/video: https://vimeo.com/49414801 password:abmi1234) Note: we weren’t able to identify all of the plants, if anyone knows the identity [...]
UofA and the Royal Alberta Museum were hotbeds of activity again this year as taxonomic staff from the RAM (ABMI’s Processing Centre) and our summer monitoring field crews came together to clean, sort and identify thousands of specimens found in the field. At the UofA, the monitoring crews were divided into three labs: invertebrates, lichens and [...]
They might look a little like aliens from a 1960s science fiction film, but soil mites are important, often overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of biodiversity. But the Royal Alberta Museum’s Dave Walter (Taxonomic Advisor / Acarologist) is out to change all of that.
Our very own Rob Hinchliffe (Lab Supervisor/Aquatic Invertebrate Taxonomist) at the Royal Alberta Museum truly lives his work. As an avid fly fisherman, he knows the streams of Alberta… and most (if not all) of what lives in them. Lucky for us and other Albertans, he documents his experience in his blog Trout Fodder “Musings of [...]