Walkthrough Video: Status of Land Cover and Biodiversity in the Oil Sands Region, Alberta, Canada

The Oil Sands Administrative Area spans 140,000 square kilometers in northern Alberta, Canada. This diverse landscape (over one fifth of the province!) spans foothills, boreal forest, and parkland habitats. Within this environmentally and economically diverse area, the well-known surface mineable region in the Athabasca Oil Sands sits in the northeast corner. In this video, David Roberts, Co-Director of ABMI’s Science Centre, takes you through highlights from our Regional Summary on the Status of Biodiversity & Land Cover in the Oil Sands Region. This report brings together nearly two decades of data spread across this large region in order to report on broad large-scale patterns. This includes several decades of species and human footprint data from over 350 ABMI monitoring sites, as well as data collected through the Before-After Dose-Response (BADR) study design under the Oil Sands Monitoring program. For the first time, we tie our reporting into international indicators stemming from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, such as biodiversity intactness, native habitat area, and changes in forest cover. Access the regional summary here: https://abmi.ca/publication/652.html Interested in summarizing other regions? You can explore data within watersheds, natural subregions, and more using the interactive ORB Tool: https://orb.abmi.ca/areas Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Overview 03:20 Reporting Objectives 05:30 Overview of the Reporting Area: the Oil Sands Region 07:30 Data and Methods 10:20 Summary of the Report Content 12:22 Human Footprint (Status and Trends) 16:08 Habitat (Native Cover and Interior Habitat) 21:22 Biodiversity Intactness Index 28:00 Energy Sector Effects 30:12 Species Spotlights: Woodland Caribou, Yellow Rail, Punctured Ramalina 30:45 Program Spotlights: Vegetation Regeneration on Seismic Lines, Indigenous-led Monitoring with Lakeland Métis 33:28 Other Ongoing Monitoring in the Region 34:53 Additional Information