General Terms and Conditions

Data collected through the ABMI’s programs can be used to identify the status, trends, and correlative relationships among common species, habitats, and human footprint. While the status and trends of some rare species and species-at-risk can be evaluated using the ABMI monitoring program, the monitoring program cannot directly evaluate all species.

ABMI indices are based on the establishment of current, intact reference conditions that are statistical predictions designed to account for human footprint. These reference conditions and subsequent ABMI analyses and reporting do not account for historical changes in the overall abundance of a species (i.e., the ABMI cannot account for any change in a species that occurred before 2003). ABMI reference conditions have statistical uncertainty for individual species. In addition, some human land uses such as grazing, hunting, and trapping or the effects of pollution, are not yet accounted for in our human footprint analyses. 

The province-wide wetland dataset (i.e., the ABMI’s Alberta Wetland Inventory) comprises three regionally-mapped inventories that cover: the boreal and foothills region, the prairie region, and the Rocky Mountain region. Each relied on machine learning approaches and open-source satellite data, but with variation in their inputs and specific methods. The overall accuracy of the full dataset therefore varies by region (i.e., 85.2% for boreal/foothills, 92.8% for prairie, and 84.5% for Rocky Mountain), as do individual wetland class accuracies. Misclassifications and confusion between classes are an inherent part of remote sensing-based land cover maps. To better understand uncertainties and limitations of these data, see our technical documentation here.

Data used in the preparation of this report along with the scientific methods used in analyses are available on the ABMI’s website and include species, habitat, and remotely sensed data collected between 1999 and 2021. Wetland inventory data collection methods are available in the ABMI's publication archive. The scientific methods used in analyses of data for this report are described here for amphibians and here for bryophytes.

The ABMI has made considerable strides in supporting biodiversity management and land cover management in Alberta and continues to build momentum. We are committed to:

• Ensuring the effective delivery of relevant, timely, and scientifically rigorous biodiversity and land cover information
• Improving biodiversity management by contributing knowledge to decision-making systems
• Supporting governments and industries in meeting their reporting obligations
• Working collaboratively to reduce duplications in provincial biodiversity and land cover monitoring
• Continuing to monitor human footprint in Alberta
• Working collaboratively to continue to improve wetland inventories
• Facilitating the transfer of information to government, industry, the research community, and the public

This is the first edition of the Wetland Atlas. Going forward, we intend to update the content regularly and incorporate data and information from external collaborators. The terms and conditions will be updated to reflect diverse contributions as needed.