4 Outcomes

Overall, the data available through AdaptWest is highly correlated with our current climate data. In addition, we notice slight changes in our climate data when comparing the 1961-1990 and 1991-2020 climate normals. These similarities suggest that adopting the AdaptWest data into our species habitat models should have minimal impacts while providing the following benefits:

• Can use more recent climate normal data that matches when ABMI surveys occurred (e.g., 1991-2020 climate normal).
• Provides us with more climate variables that could be incorporated into our models.
• Expands the spatial extent so we can use a single source of climate data for analyses both within and outside of Alberta.
• Acquire data from a source that also have climate projections to support any future climate change work.
• Create down-scaled predictions for any survey locations monitored by the ABMI.

The Daymet data also covers all of North America, making it suitable for expanding analyses outside of Alberta. However, climate normals would have to be calculated from their annual predictions and their are no climate scenarios produced by Daymet. In addition, this data source has fewer climatic variables. However, the fact that they do produce daily estimates for these variables could be informative for certain projects.

The ABMI Science Centre has decided to adopt using the AdaptWest data for future development of our species habitat models. Details for how the products available through AdaptWest and the ClimateNA software is outlined in the Process section.