U.S. NABCI

Monitoring Subcommittee -
Database Management Team

Charge and Products

Effective data management is integral to successfully conserving bird populations of concern in North America. Opportunities for Improving Avian Monitoring (2007) emphasizes the need to maintain bird population monitoring data in modern management systems and provide greater access to avian monitoring information. Improvements to bird conservation data management should focus on developing and supporting efficient data architectures and minimizing long-term information loss.

To make progress on the fourth recommendation in Opportunities for Improving Avian Monitoring (2007), “Develop a comprehensive plan for integrating and managing bird population monitoring data”, the US North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) Monitoring Subcommittee drafted several recommendations pertaining to data management system needs.

The NABCI Monitoring Subcommittee also drafted bird population monitoring policy statements to facilitate full and open access to quality data for bird population monitoring (see attached: Data Management for Bird Population Monitoring Policy Statements - U.S. North American Bird Conservation Monitoring Subcommittee, February 2009).

As a next step, the Subcommittee needs to conduct a transparent review of priority population and habitat databases across bird initiatives to determine deficiencies and costs in meeting standards (including the identification of priority surveys/databases that currently do not exist). More specifically, it needs to determine hardware/software requirements by engaging IT, computing and database management experts in an assessment.

The this end, the Subcommittee sponsored a workshop (see attached announcement and agenda) in July 2009 at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center where attendees developed criteria (see attached spreadsheet) to enable bird initiatives to evaluate management frameworks for each priority database across all bird initiatives. These criteria resulted in unified recommendations to address resource needs to protect extant and create desired but nonexistent priority databases in the long term. (see attached: Meeting the Challenge of Data Management for Bird Conservation – US North American Bird Conservation Initiative Monitoring Subcommittee, January 2010). The Team, lead by Elizabeth Martin and Grant Ballard, compiled best management practices for data management. (Data Management Best Practices and Standards for Biodiversity Data Applicable to Bird Monitoring Data).