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46 CLIMATE CHANGE ALBERTAS BIODIVERSITY MONITORING Biodiversity monitoring is essential to support climate change adaptation. Richard Schneider 2014 highlighted several of the roles of biodiversity monitoring in climate change adaptation. These include the construction and validation of future projections of species and ecosystem distributions the development and measurement of ecological indicators and evaluation of adaptive management actions. High-quality long-term monitoring data can also provide an early warning system for detecting the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems. The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute monitors over 2500 species in terrestrial and wetland habitats in Alberta through field data collection and remote sensing providing the most comprehensive biodiversity monitoring data for the province. Erin Bayne in prep discussed how relative abundance data from the ABMIs monitoring program can be used to detect changes in species distributions even if their range edges do not occur in Alberta. Further he identified how new technology and remote sensing can improve monitoring of species phenology or the timing of biological events like migration or spring green-up which will be impacted by climate change. HoweverbothRichardSchneider2014 andErinBayneinprephaveidentifiednew monitoringapproachesthatwouldimprove thequalityofbiodiversitydataforpredicting anddetectingtheimpactsofclimatechange onAlbertasbiodiversity.Tocomplement existingmonitoringeffortssurveyscould beintensifiedinareaswheretheresponseof biodiversitytoclimatechangeislikelytobe mosteasilydetectedsuchasalongecotoneslike theboundarybetweentheParklandandBoreal NaturalRegionsandalongelevationgradients. Inadditionmoreintensemonitoringinprotected areaswouldbetterenabledetectionofecological changeintheabsenceofhumandisturbance thisinformationcanbeusedinestablishing andmeasuringecologicalbenchmarks.