For assistance, please contact Jenna Walsh jmwalsh@sfu.ca or the librarians at Ask a Librarian.

Encyclopedias

For a complete list, check the Biological Sciences guide - Background information

• Alpine plants of North America: an encyclopedia of mountain flowers from the Rockies to Alaska. [print]
• Birds of British Columbia. [print]
• Blackwell's concise encyclopedia of environmental management
• Darwin's fishes: an encyclopedia of ichthyology, ecology, and evolution
• Encyclopedia of biodiversity
• Encyclopedia of ecology and environmental management [print]
• Encyclopedia of environmental issues [print]
• Encyclopedia of global change: environmental change and human society [print and online]
• Field guide to the common forest plants in northwestern Ontario [print]
• Freshwater fishes of Canada [print]
• Grzimek's animal life encyclopedia [print and online]
• A guide to some common plants of the southern interior of British Columbia [print]
• Handbook of Rocky Mountain plants [print]
• Illustrated flora of British Columbia [print]
• Plants of northern British Columbia [print]
• Trees, shrubs & flowers to know in British Columbia & Washington [print]
• Vascular plants of continental Northwest Territories, Canada [print]

Look at the following subject heading to find field guides for plants:

Plants -- Identification
Plants -- Identification -- Handbooks, Manuals Etc

Taxonomies

Many of these resources contain distribution data, maps and ecology information. Some have references so they are useful for finding additional information. When searching for books or journal articles, it is useful to also use "scientific" names of commonly known plants and animals, and the sources below can assist.

• Integrated Taxonomic Information System Use to find authoritative taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. Can search common names to obtain scientific names and classification: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. 
• Birds of North America From Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. A continually updated, comprehensive reference for life history information on over 700 different bird species
• FishBase A global information system about fishes.
• IUCN Redlist of Threatened Species

British Columbia

• Lab for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Department of Geography UBC
• UBC Herbarium, Department of Botany UBC.
• Biodiversity of BC -- Biodiversity databases  -- E-Bird Canada -- British Columbia section
• E-Flora of BC - Electronic atlas of the plants of British Columbia --  Species Checklist -- e.g. Birds of the Vancouver Checklist Area (Rick Toochin) [PDF]
• E-Fauna of BC - a biogeographic atlas of the wildlife of British Columbia.
• Encyclopedia of British Columbia -- click "subjects", and check out "natural history" and "park, provincial"

Canada

• Canadian Biodiversity Website - From McGill's Redpath Museum ​
• Canadian Legislation (timeline), Species Distributions

Books

Library Catalogue Search Guide (finding books) Try searching your keyword in the basic search, e.g.

• environm* and (law or legislat*) and (canad* or bc or british columbia)
• salmon and (bcorbritish columbia)
• spotted owl and (bcorbritish columbia)

From the search on spotted owl (above), one of the relevant books had the following useful subject headings:

• Spotted owl -- British Columbia
• Endangered species -- British Columbia
• Logging -- Environmental aspects -- British Columbia

Maps for B.C.

Some useful subject headings: 

To search for books by subject heading, use the Browse Search option in the SFU Library Catalogue, then select Subject browse from the drop-down menu.

• Hiking -- British Columbia
• Hiking -- British Columbia -- Guidebooks
• Hiking -- British Columbia -- Lower Mainland -- Guidebooks
• Hiking -- British Columbia -- North Vancouver -- Maps
• Hiking -- British Columbia -- Vancouver Island -- Guidebooks
• Hiking -- British Columbia -- West Coast Trail -- Maps
• Trails -- British Columbia
• Trails -- British Columbia -- Guidebooks
• Trails -- British Columbia -- Lower Mainland -- Guidebooks
• Trails -- British Columbia -- Vancouver Region -- Guidebooks
• Plants -- Identification

E-Books

All the books within these databases are also listed in the library catalogue, so your search there will find any titles within these databases.

• ENVIROnetBASE - ebooks in the Environmental Sciences.
• BIOSCIENCEnetBASE - ebooks in Biosciences

Research Concepts Worksheet

Use the worksheet to brainstorm ideas, figure out keywords, develop search strategies. 

Citation Finder 

Use this tool to locate specific journal articles, books, etc. (i.e. when you already have a citation/reference)

Term paper 

The term paper provides more details on search strategies and techniques for REM 100 paper.

Journal Articles

Finding Journal Articles (finding articles)

For a complete list, see Biological Sciences databases and Resource & Environmental Management databases. For the CSA Illumina and Ebsco Host platform databases, check for the words "peer-reviewed" or "academic journals" to zero in on those types of articles.

• Environment Complete Indexes over 1,900 environmental journals, with full-text access to about 750. Also available is full-text access to over 200 monographs.
• Web of Science - Science, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities Citation Indexes. Once you find a useful article, you may want to click on the "cited times" link to find other researchers that have cited the article that you selected. 
• Zoological Record plus Zoological Record Archive - All aspects of animal research. Keywords will yield some results, but the use of scientific names will produce more results
• Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) - Biology, technology, policy and pollution information on all aquatic environments.
• BioOne - covering biological, ecological and environmental sciences. From 2000 to current.
• Academic Search Premier - Multidisciplinary index to academic & popular journals.
• CBCA Complete

Government

Legislation

Look under REM guide's tab for "additional sources" to find useful guides such as:

• REM government sources guide.
  • Search tools
  • British Columbia
  • Canada -- ​Environment Canada - Acts and Regulations
• UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme Global portal to authoritative environmental information based on themes and regions" from the United Nations Environmental Programme.
• UNEP - Division of Environmental Law and Conventions (DELC)
• Bylaws for different jurisdictions can also be found on the city sites, e.g. Delta - Environmental Bylaws

Government & Policy Information Databases

• Canadian Research Index - Canadian government publications. Try searches such as environment* and (law or legislat*) and canad* (or other jurisdictions)
• Canadian Electronic Library

Maps

Try looking for maps from government sources and the library catalogue (section on this guide for subject headings on hiking and trails)

• Tourism British Columbia
• B.C. Ministry of Tourism - Recreation sites & trails
• City of Vancouver - maps