Margaret E Andrew

Canada is the second largest country in the world by land area, at nearly 10 million km2 in size. Monitoring biodiversity and associated ecosystems for a nation the size of Canada requires approaches that enable broad scale national assessments. Over the past five years the Universities of British Columbia (UBC) and Victoria (UVic) with the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), have investigated the role remote sensing can play in the assessment of biodiversity across Canada. This research includes the national level application of indices which capture different aspects of species habitats, and the production of regionalizations or environmental domains which allows for the assessment of, for example, the representation of park networks which can be used to inform national biodiversity planning.