BAM’s population models bring together over 1.45 million bird surveys to show what species are where and how patterns in bird abundance and distribution are changing over time. Currently, these models can provide estimates for every five years up to 1990 at a 1 km2 resolution. Recently announced financial support from the Canadian Space Agency, under their smartEarth initiative, will enable BAM to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of these estimates. Over the next two years, BAM will incorporate multi-spectral, time-matched Earth Observation data from Landsat, Sentinel, and RADARSAT satellites into the bird population model workflow. This fine-scale data will provide greater alignment between the time of the bird survey and the habitat conditions captured by the satellite, in turn capturing within-season variation in how different bird species use different habitats. Ultimately, this will allow for near real-time bird abundance and distribution predictions, an invaluable tool for understanding and managing birds in the dynamic Canadian boreal forest. We will apply the improved models to estimate population size and trend for 65 priority species across boreal Canada. The models will provide new insights for boreal birds into their habitat relationships, the timing of their breeding in Canada, how bird populations and their distributions have changed over the last several decades, and how they may continue to change under various future climate scenarios. We will also build accessible guides and tools for users to understand and implement the new model workflows themselves, and support the use of the tools in a series of workshops. BAM’s bird population models are a valuable resource for land-use decision-making. This funding will ensure BAM’s models remain at the forefront of technological opportunities and land-use planning needs of today. Share this post Previous Post Next Post