Projected Abundance of Arboreal Lichen, Year 2025

Month: Honourable Mention
Organization: fRI Research
Products: ArcGIS Desktop 10.3 and ArcPy

fRI Research developed a forecasting model to understand how landscape disturbances alter caribou and grizzly bear food supply in Alberta. The primary goal was to assess changes in habitat conditions as a result of wildfire, forest harvesting, mountain pine beetle infestation and mountain pine beetle control efforts and project how those landscape changes alter food supply. This is an output from fRI’s custom ArcGIS script tool visualizing arboreal lichen, an important food source for caribou. The model can predict the abundance of 31 plants according to user-defined management scenarios.