Innovation Anthology #755:
Biologists with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute visit designated sites on a five year rotation so they can monitor change over time.
Greg Brooke organizes field operations for the ABMI’s Monitoring Centre.
As he explains, new technology is changing the way information is collected.
GREG BROOKE: Last year was the first year that we put out cameras to replace mammal tracking where we physically went out and walked a 10 kilometer transect and basically wrote down all of the tracks that came across that line. Whereas it’s replaced now by cameras where we put them out in February, the cameras stay out and capture hopefully all the mammals in the area from February until the end of July which is significantly more.
Greg says for birds species, the Monitoring Centre has switched from using human point counts to placing digital recorders in the field.
GREG BROOKE: The bird recorders we put out in February and pick up in July. Last year we collected over 10 terabytes of data, And for cameras, there was over 3.7 million pictures of all kinds of mammals from all over the province.
The bird recordings are analyzed by the ABMI’s new Bio Acoustical Unit.
Thanks today to the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute
Program Date: 2016-02-04