Featured Projects

Submitted by allison_kenlan_5542 on

National Species Habitat Modeling Initiative

Discussions with NatureServe Canada members and partners have confirmed that there is significant interest to advance a national Canadian SHM collaboration that would see partners organizations and agencies pool capacity and expertise to develop shared tools and resources to undertake regional and national SHM.

NatureServe (North America) has a mature modeling project and team that delivered the Map of Biodiversity Importance and continues to improve their workflows and supporting cloud-based hardware and software infrastructure.

NatureServe Canada is well positioned to coordinate national SHM work in Canada. In addition to access to the NatureServe modeling team and infrastructure, the Ecosystem-based Automated Range project has acquired a very thorough set of species occurrence data, much of which is shareable. Preliminary work has also been done to scope out a Canada-wide SHM Initiative, including researching existing Canadian SHM projects and environmental predictor data as well as assembling and surveying a Working Group of interested parties with over 100 participants.

SHM Technical Pilot

A subset of the SHM Working Group is actively engaged in the first phase of a Technical Pilot. After discussing various options for working with the NatureServe modeling team, it was decided that the scope of the first phase would be to publish existing Canadian models, including:

  • Standardized metadata.
  • Determination of a Model Confidence rating for each model.
  • Addition to the NatureServe model database so they can be made available in the public Model Dashboard, and in the by-invitation Model Output Review Tool for expert review.

A planned second phase will involve assembling species occurrence and environmental predictor spatial data, and testing the NatureServe modeling workflow and code to see how well it meets Canadian needs.

Governance and Funding

NatureServe Canada continues to coordinate the Canadian SHM Working Group. However, it is imperative that funding be secured for 2025-26 and beyond to ensure the required labour and infrastructure are resourced if the project is to progress.

Please contact us at shm@natureserve.ca if you are interested in participating in technical and/or organization aspects.

NatureServe's public model dashboard provides summary information on the model development/review status, species at-risk status and model confidence for all available models, as well as links to model metadata.
The user interface for the NatureServe Model Output Review Tool. It includes features for adjusting the High, Medium and Low habitat probability thresholds, annotating the map with comments, reviewing and commenting on environmental predictors, and providing an overall rating with comments.
Based on provided metadata, each model is given a confidence rating, including suggestions of appropriate uses. Model confidence can increase as the model is reviewed and refined.