Take a Walk on the Wild Site

Some of the most important wildlife and habitat research Environment Canada scientists in Ontario have conducted over the past 50 years is the foundation of an interactive web site that enables users to explore species and spaces—particularly birds and their habitats—by combining different thematic layers of information on digital maps.

The dynamic new web site is the latest offshoot of Project WILDSPACE^TM--an effort launched by the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) in 1996 to pull its diverse data holdings together into an information management system. The site, which has been under development since 1998, enables users to learn about some of this research, and provides access to a wealth of information on wildlife.

Visitors to the site can search from either a species or spaces perspective. A species search provides links to detailed information on 431 species of Canadian birds, including colour photos, life history, sound bytes of calls, range and breeding area maps, and research activities. Limited information is also available on a number of reptiles, amphibians and mammals. A spaces search gives the user the option of choosing from maps of the Western Hemisphere, Canada or Ontario, and then selecting from a list of geographically referenced themes, such as ecozones, ecoregions, provinces, and research projects to query for information. It is even possible to generate correlations between themes and species, such as the percentage of a bird's breeding range that falls within a certain geographic area.

The web site is a more visual, simplified and condensed version of some of the data used by the WILDSPACE^TM decision support system (DSS), an analytical, planning and management tool that enables scientists, resource managers and decision makers to carry out more complex queries on the temporal and spatial distribution of wildlife. The DSS, which currently has access to more than half of the 60 data sets compiled to date, can instantly calculate changes in bird populations, breeding densities and other spatial information, factor in other attributes, such as political boundaries, and transfer the resulting summary onto a thematic map. This ability to highlight trends or anomalies makes it an invaluable tool for environmental assessment and management.

The creation of the information management system, DSS and web site, is an ongoing effort involving expertise from across the Department and cooperation with a wide range of government and non-government partners. CWS's role is to identify and gather data sets through questionnaires and interviews with scientists, ensure that all taxonomic references are standardized, and format the information for the system—a major undertaking for some older data, which are handwritten on file cards. Experts at the National Water Research Institute developed the decision support system that generates knowledge from these diverse research efforts and techniques, while the Meteorological Service of Canada provided digital base maps, created hundreds of static maps and an interactive mapping system for the web site, and is responsible for ensuring that all the data in the database are correctly referenced on global coordinates.

Since its inception as a primarily Ontario-based project, WILDSPACE^TM has expanded to include information on all Canadian breeding birds and a variety of CWS projects beyond the province's borders. Organizers hope that more detailed information on other animal species will soon be added, along with data on habitats and projects across Canada. In the meantime, plans are under way to post photos of typical breeding habitats of birds, as well as their nests, eggs and young, and to devise a way for volunteer wildlife monitors to input observations directly to the web. In the future, the multi-media site could feature everything from video clips to interviews with experts. Visit WILDSPACE^TM at http://wildspace.ec.gc.ca.

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