Vegetation Regeneration Mapping Program
Categories: Habitat Recovery
Status: In Progress
About the Project
The ABMI is advancing the mapping of vegetation on human footprint features through its Vegetation Regeneration Mapping (VRM) program.
This multi-year program is designed to track and quantify forest regeneration across disturbed landscapes such as seismic lines, wellsites, pipelines, cutlines, and roads, with a particular focus on Alberta’s Oil Sands Region and in caribou range. The VRM program includes several sub-projects including:The project is based on testing a key assumption of ecosystem-based forest management (EBM) practiced by the forest industry–that the biological communities in burned (i.e., naturally disturbed) and harvested areas will eventually converge over time. The BDT project will help understand how EBM techniques affect biodiversity in Alberta’s regenerating boreal forest, and whether this convergence is occurring.
- Caribou Habitat Tracking (CHT) Project
- Habitat Mapping of Forest Regeneration in Alberta’s Oil Sands Region
- Vegetation Inventory of Legacy Seismic Lines in the Richardson Caribou Range
- Vegetation Inventory of Legacy Seismic Lines in the West Side Athabasca River Caribou Range
- Vegetation Inventory of Legacy Seismic Lines in the Chinchaga Caribou Range
- Enhanced Forest Inventory through Multi-Spectral LiDAR Acquisition
- Linear Disturbances Mapping in Northern Saskatchewan using Lidar Technology
Leveraging high-resolution airborne lidar, aerial imagery, and artificial intelligence, the VRM program detects and measures vegetation structure, composition, and recovery trends across broad spatial scales. Airborne data and machine learning models are also used to accurately delineate and map linear disturbance features (e.g., seismic lines) across a large portion of central and northern Alberta.
photo: Branko Hricko
photo: Branko Hricko
By the end of 2025, the program aims to complete vegetation mapping on human footprint features across all caribou ranges in the province and approximately 45% of the Alberta Oil Sands Region. These data enable more accurate, repeatable assessments of vegetation recovery on both linear and polygonal disturbances, providing critical insights for land managers, regulators, and restoration practitioners. Ultimately, the VRM program supports science-based decision-making for reclamation planning, species at risk recovery, and cumulative effects management.
Alberta Environment and Protected Areas
Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta
Weston Family Foundation
Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.
Oil Sands Monitoring Program
The Biodiversity Trajectories (BDT) project is a multi-year, collaborative project between the ABMI and seven forestry companies in Alberta.
The ABMI’s Ecological Recovery Monitoring (ERM) project assesses ecological recovery of certified reclaimed oil and gas wellsites.
As restoration treatments are implemented in Alberta’s caribou ranges, long-term monitoring plays a critical role in supporting continual improvement and ensuring treatments are responsive over time.
