Assessment of Correlation between Waterfowl Abundance and Productivity and Increasing Intensity of Oil Sands related Habitat Change

Intent: Environment Canada intends to award a sole source contract to Ducks Unlimited to assess and report on an examination of key relationships between linear features (roads, seismic lines, and pipelines) in the Alberta oil sands area and waterfowl populations. All helicopter-based duck survey and associated land cover data collected between 2013 and 2014 within the Alberta oil sands region is currently owned by Ducks Unlimited, and will be used in the analyses and results reported as part of this proposed contract. Environment Canada recognizes that other suppliers may be able to perform similar work, but must purchase all required background information from Ducks Unlimited unless they have already completed comparable work. As such, it is not cost effective for another potential supplier to purchase or duplicate the existing required Intellectual Property upon which the results of this study must necessarily be based.

Background: The Joint Canada/Alberta Implementation Plan for Oil Sands Monitoring is helping to guide effective and responsible environmental management of the oil sands resource. The Terrestrial Biodiversity and Habitat Monitoring component is focused on an improved understanding of how and why biodiversity and habitats are changing and the possible influence of oil sands development on biodiversity changes. This information will be used to support sound decision-making by governments and stakeholders.

The objective of this project is to examine changes in waterfowl abundance and productivity across an increasing gradient of habitat change due to oil sands related development.

STATEMENT OF WORK

This project will examine key relationships between linear features (roads, seismic lines, and pipelines) in the Alberta oil sands area and waterfowl populations. All helicopter-based breeding duck and brood survey and associated land cover data collected between 2013 and 2014 within the Alberta oil sands region and owned by the contractor will be used in the analyses and results reported as part of this contract.

Activities and timelines

1) Data Compilation and Statistical Analyses (completion January 15, 2015) • Data entry and proofing, merging of survey and geospatial spatial data in Access and ArcMap in preparation for analyses • Analyses of relationships between landscape changes and waterfowl abundance, correcting for detection probability. Analyses will occur i. Separately at two spatial scales, local (pond) and landscape (grid) ii. Separately by nesting guild: ground, overwater, and cavity iii. Separately by pair and brood rearing period iv. Using hierarchical mixed models, i.e. Program Unmark coded in the statistical software package R.

2) Draft Report (completion February 28th, 2015), will include; • detailed methodology as outlined above • results (plots and tables) showing relationships between duck abundance and landscape changes

3) Final Report (completion March 30th, 2015), will include; • revisions incorporating comments/input provided by the Departmental Representative

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: Environment Canada has determined that any intellectual property rights arising from the performance of the Work under the resulting contract will belong to the Canada, on the following grounds:

(6.4.1) the main purpose of the contract, or of the deliverables contracted for, is to generate knowledge and information for public dissemination;