Visualizing our Biodiversity in Átl’ḵa7tsem/Howe Sound

Andrew Simon, PhD student Dept Zoology, UBC

Summary

To enhance our work on Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECMs), with funding provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada, we are supporting the creation of an integrative framework for biodiversity assessment for the Átl’ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound Biosphere Region.

Synthesizing a growing biodiversity dataset using open-source tools, UBC PhD student Andrew Simon aims to map biodiversity in relation to critical environmental gradients, identifying essential biodiversity variables that can be used to inform conservation strategies in the biosphere region. More fundamentally, this work will serve to model processes underlying shifts in species distributions and abundances to create systems enabling the detection and attribution of biodiversity change.

View Project Updates

The Need

Since settlers arrived in the region, Indigenous knowledge holders have witnessed decisions over land use destroy natural habitats that sustain healthy ecosystems and food sources. We now face the cumulative impacts of these effects. Altering course has been slow and will increasingly depend on our ability to monitor biodiversity change.

Despite major technological advances to promote the availability of biodiversity and environmental data, many challenges remain in developing systems to synthesize this information in support of reliable biodiversity assessments. Biosphere regions are an ideal model for addressing these challenges, offering unique opportunities for the integration of methods and technologies to support biodiversity assessment at the intersection of conservation and human development.

Project Goals

Create a gridded spatial dataset (an atlas) integrating LiDAR, terrestrial ecosystem mapping, and biodiversity data for the Átl’ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound region and explore a novel approach to quantifying and visualizing habitat and species diversity using open data sources.

Project Benefits

The outcomes of this research will include a set of algorithms that facilitate iterative processes of biodiversity data aggregation, curation, analysis, and visualization: a framework for biodiversity assessment and reporting designed to support the region in realizing the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and Sustainable Development Goals.

Location

This project is occurring throughout the whole Átl'ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound Biosphere Region.

Project Updates

August 2023

A first iteration of the framework is currently in the final editing stages. Site selection and sampling of some sites to verify plant communities and site characteristics has been completed.

As of April, 2023, the phase of this project that HSBRIS was supporting has concluded.

April 2023

ince November 2022, outreach and consultation has been conducted with knowledge communities within the biosphere region to gauge overlapping interests in biodiversity. This project is in the early stages of synthesizing available biodiversity data and a prototype framework for vegetation analysis in the region has been created (see images below). This framework is still under development and will be continually worked on.