Welcome to the Canada Biodiversity Web Site

Introduction

At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, more than 156 countries and the European Union signed the Convention on Biological Diversity. Canada, in the same year, ratified its commitment to the Convention on Biological Diversity through the production of two key documents: The Canadian Biodiversity Strategy and The Science Assessment on Biodiversity.

The current decline of global biodiversity is a strong cross-cutting issue that is intended to integrate decision-making and mobilize individuals and agencies. Canada, like many countries, recognized the significance of this global biodiversity challenge, including the difficult task of integrating many diverse science and policy issues. To some, this was seen as an exercise to build cooperative policy structures and management agreements but to others, it was a singular opportunity to integrate and share biodiversity observations and knowledge in the field, the laboratory and the classroom.

In 1992, the Smithsonian Institution initiated a global biodiversity observing program under the auspices of UNESCO. Using standardized one-hectare plot sizes and measurement protocols for multi-taxa monitoring, the Global Forest Biodiversity Observing network now numbers more than 500 sites in approximately two dozen sites worldwide, with the majority of sites located throughout the Americas.

One hundred and four of these sites are located in Canada, forming the National Biodiversity Observing Site (NBOS) network, located across climate, chemical and ecological gradients. Based largely in southern forest ecosystems, the sites are first established and monitored with information shared within the community, amongst scientists and directly with decision-makers, nationally and internationally.