Multi-Scaled Data in Ecology: Scale Dependent Patterns in the Environment

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Cornell University is awarded a grant to bring new information on birds online and disseminate these to a wide and diverse audience. The goal is to continue to expand the resources and analysis tools available at the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN) (http://www.avianknowledge.net). The data resources of the Constant Effort Capture Method (CECM) community will be added. These data, which have been gathered over a 20-year period by more than 1000 field stations across North America, provide detailed avian demographic information. Bringing this data resource to the AKN will create the most comprehensive source of environmental monitoring and conservation biology available. The data will be integrated into the AKN via a bird banding data exchange schema. This schema is based on the Darwin Core standard and is compatible with AKN's observational data schema. The goal is to expand the existing bird monitoring data exchange schema to include bird demographic data, and, specifically, to modify the schema to handle information gathered (age, sex, size, weight) on individual birds. The constant effort capture data will be federated using the DiGIR protocol. A data warehouse structure will archive these data and make them generally available. Finally, an Internet-based multi-scale analysis application will be developed and publicly released to a broad spectrum of users. The interdisciplinary approach will bring statistical and computational specialists together with population biologists to develop new and broadly applicable technologies to create new methodologies that track long-term environmental patterns at a range of scales. To allow rapid browsing of these data over the Internet, new strategies in data visualizations will be explored. This project will expose new data resources and advances in statistical analysis to vast new audiences: from biologists, conservation agencies, and land-use planners to school classrooms and thousands of citizens who participate in environmental monitoring. The project will open new scientific, conservation, and educational opportunities, and by actively disseminating data visualization and exploration applications it will enable researchers as well as literally millions of people across North America who watch and appreciate wild birds to access a vast resource focused on bird populations.