Yukon High Elevation Bird Monitoring Point Counts

The Yukon High Elevation Monitoring Program (HEMP) provides terrestrial bird monitoring data from autonomous recording units deployed across 10-13 mountains in Yukon and British Columbia. The program uses passive acoustic monitoring, with recordings scheduled from 3:00 AM to 9:00 AM, and a subset of 3-minute recordings transcribed for species identification to establish baseline data.

Use Cases

• Analyze species occurrence across elevational gradients like low boreal forest, high boreal forest, subalpine, and alpine habitat zones.
• Model bird population trends using time to first detection data from transcribed recordings across multiple monitoring years.
• Assess distribution shifts for northern mountain bird species by comparing data from specific ecoregions like Yukon Southern Lakes and St. Elias Mountains.

Strengths

• Data collection spans multiple years (2019, 2021, 2022, 2024) establishing a temporal baseline.
• Sampling covers 10 finalized mountain locations across multiple distinct Yukon ecoregions.
• Uses a structured sampling design with five random sites per habitat zone within a defined two-kilometer sampling frame.

Limitations

• Sampling is restricted to mountains with hiking or access trails, potentially introducing geographic bias against completely inaccessible areas.
• Data is derived from a subset of randomly selected recordings per location, not a complete census of all audio captured.
• The description does not specify the total number of recordings, transcribed samples, or detected species, limiting assessment of dataset scale.

Provenance

Source

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Collection Method

Passive acoustic monitoring via autonomous recording units (ARUs) conducting avian point counts; a subset of recordings transcribed for bird species identification.

Time Range

2019, 2021, 2022, 2024

Freshness

Data collection occurred as recently as 2024, with metadata updated in March 2026.

Geography

Mountains in southwest Yukon (Yukon Southern Lakes, St. Elias Mountains, Ruby Ranges, Pelly Mountains, Yukon Stikine Highland) and the Northern Coastal Mountain ecoregion in British Columbia.