We work together to achieve greater outcomes.
Collaborative environmental monitoring in the Oil Sands Region.
Lidar and imagery data for Alberta.
Translating monitoring results and scientific information for a range of audiences and end users.
We are committed to working with groups that are interested in the management of Alberta’s living resources.
Working together to mobilize biodiversity data.
A grassroots initiative that works with Indigenous communities interested in biodiversity monitoring.
Learn about landholder information and land access details.
Explore our ongoing and past projects, collaborations, and how we apply research in the field.
View detailed online status reports summarizing land cover and biodiversity information for different regions.
Learn about the species ABMI monitors in Alberta’s encyclopedia of life.
Read and download our academic publications, annual reports, monitoring protocols, and more.
Explore, visualize, and create maps for areas of interest in Alberta.
Manage, store, process, share, and discover environmental sensor data.
Use this tool to instantly generate a report on land cover and biodiversity for many areas of interest across Alberta.
Our code repository for species habitat models, the wildRtrax R package, land cover indicators, and more.
See our latest news, stories, videos, blogs, and more!
Our staff have a wide range of expertise that are important to the ABMI's success and day-to-day operations.
The ABMI is a great place to work, learn, and be part of a passionate team.
Be a part of a world-class biodiversity monitoring program.
Have questions? We've got answers.
Get in touch with us today.
Quick access to our products and resources.
ABMI Data
Biodiversity Browser
Mapping Portal
Wildtrax
Online Reporting for Biodiversity (ORB) Tool
Media and Storyhub
Publications
Projects and Collaborations
Staff Directory
The ABMI as we know it officially began operations in 2007. A small team was motivated to answer a pressing question: how can we evaluate the combined effects of human activities on Alberta’s natural environments? Alberta was a province in transition, with a growing population and demand for natural resources, that needed a comprehensive system effective across multiple scales to monitor changes in Alberta’s ecosystems.
While we formally incorporated as a not-for-profit in 2007, the idea behind the ABMI was born long before. The program emerged from a decade of planning and testing. We developed protocols to monitor seven taxonomic groups determined by our scientific advisors to be useful indicators of ecosystem health as well as protocols aimed at monitoring habitats. Through these pilot years, we refined the protocols by focusing on key questions like, “can this be implemented in a standardized and cost-effective way across the whole province?” and “does it produce the data needed to evaluate cumulative effects?”
Meet the people that make the ABMI work.
We started out visiting 80 field sites across the province in our first year. In that first year alone, we collected 156 species of soil mites (an important indicator of soil health), of which 106 were new to Alberta, 10 were new to Canada, and seven were new to science! Since then, our team has grown to include over 80 full time-staff and close to 40 seasonal field and data processing team members. Our work has also grown, and includes new forms of monitoring and reporting on the world around us:
Find all our annual reports, from 2007 to today, in our publications archive.
Programs have shifted over the years: we participated in the Ecological Monitoring Committee for the Lower Athabasca in the early 2010s; NatureLynx’s dedicated community of users contributed over 21,000 sightings of species over its five years of operations; and we changed from winter tracking to using remote cameras to monitor mammals. In 2021, we shifted our taxonomic team from the Royal Alberta Museum to the University of Alberta to centralize our staff, increasing the odds of learning something new about liverworts at the water cooler. Working at the ABMI is a commitment to learning and adapting, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
In 2022, we launched Biodiversity Pathways, a national affiliate committed to supporting work that spans geographic borders such as research on caribou recovery and environmental sensor data management. The aim of this affiliate is to develop, support, and implement science-based monitoring with our neighbouring provinces and territories. In 2023, the Caribou Monitoring Unit rebranded to be the Wildlife Science Centre under Biodiversity Pathways in recognition of its growing sphere of work on more than just caribou in British Columbia and beyond.
10-Year Science and Program Review
In 2017, after a decade of operations, we undertook a thorough review of our programs to understand the extent to which we'd accomplished what we set out to do. This review was overseen by external panels of scientific experts and senior leadership in sectors such as government, industry, and environmental non-profits.
We couldn’t have done it all without our delivery partners, InnoTech Alberta, the University of Alberta, and the University of Calgary. And, of course, our work is made possible by our dedicated staff–some have been with us since the very beginning! Over the years, our team has reimagined how the ABMI can respond to evolving technologies and environmental needs and grown alongside these changes. From satellites to spectrograms, we’re excited to be a part of whatever the future brings!