The Biophysical Dataset
BAM has been working to acquire comprehensive spatial environmental variables relevant to our modelling objectives. Variables were chosen to include examples of biophysical factors known or expected to affect avian distributions at the national or continental scales. The biophysical data were collected independently of the avian data, so the locations of the biophysical data do not necessarily correspond to locations where avian data were collected.
Our data includes remotely-sensed land cover information, climate measures, and forest productivity indices. We drew from existing, public sources of data, as well as privately-held digital Forest Resource Inventories (FRI). These inventories, assembled by provincial governments or by tenure holders such as forest companies, provide more detailed information on land cover characteristics, such as types and ages of trees, than what can be extracted from satellite imaging.
Digital forest resource inventories (FRI data) were obtained for nearly all of boreal Canada. We have combined the data from all provinces (each of which uses different formats) into one consistent format, to obtain a national FRI dataset. The Common Attribute Schema (CAS) procedure to address the variation between forest inventories was developed jointly for the Boreal Avian Modelling Project and the Canadian BEACONs project and is described in METHODS.
The types of biophysical data in our databases include:
Click here for a PDF summary document of the types of biophysical data used by BAM with links to their sources.
See the below reports for a detailed summary of our Biophysical Database as of 2010: