Workshop: Linking remote animal detection and movement data with macrosystem environmental datasets and networks; September, 2018; Front Royal, VA

科技的进步使科学家们能够收集到大量的动物出没和活动的数据，这些数据来自偏远地区。这在一代人之前是不可能的。提高动物数据特异性的技术有录音、摄像陷阱、无线电遥测和地理定位器。这些数据扩大了我们对动物个体生活和运动模式的认识。此外，卫星和飞机遥感以及观测网络等相对较新的技术正在提供大量的景观和宏观系统尺度的环境数据，如降雨、植被生产力、结构、连通性等，这在以前是不可能的。这些技术的进步，加上互联网用户连接的增加，使得公众更广泛地参与到收集动物或环境数据中来。在许多情况下，挑战在于将公民、地方团体以及国家和国际机构收集的动物观察信息与相关的大规模环境数据集联系起来。该项目在一个专家研讨会上解决了这些问题，这些专家帮助推进了与动物探测和景观和宏观系统尺度的环境数据相关的新技术。研讨会明确的跨学科性质将促进联系和合作，旨在减轻从动物观察到宏观系统尺度的环境数据集的信息的技术障碍。这些障碍目前限制了研究人员扩大研究的规模和范围。将有一个为期两天的研讨会，重点讨论如何将研究动物分布和运动的新技术和新能力与景观和宏观系统尺度上的环境状态和环境变化联系起来。讲习班将汇集遥感和动物探测领域的专家，目的是综合各种技术，并为一份关于综合技术的潜力的审查文件奠定基础，以回答生态学和保护生物学中的重要问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Technological advances have allowed scientists to collect vast quantities of data on animal occurrences and movements from remote locations in ways that weren?t possible even a generation ago. Examples of technology improving the specificity of animal data are acoustic recordings, camera-traps, radiotelemetry, and geolocators. These data have broadened our knowledge of where individual animals live and their movement patterns. In addition, relatively new technologies such as remote sensing from satellites and aircraft, and observation networks are providing large quantities of environmental data, such as rainfall, vegetation productivity, structure, connectivity and more at landscape and macrosystem scales that were not previously possible. These advances in technology, along with increased connectivity of internet users, have allowed a broader involvement of the public in collecting animal or environmental data. The challenge in many cases has been to link the animal-observations information, being collected by citizens, local groups, as well as national and international agencies, to relevant large-scale environmental datasets. This project addresses these issues in a workshop with experts that have helped advance the new technologies associated with animal detections and environmental data at landscape and macrosystem scales.The explicitly inter-disciplinary nature of the workshop will foster linkages and collaborations that aim to alleviate technical barriers for scaling the information from animal observations to environmental datasets at macrosystem scales. Such barriers currently limit researchers from broadening the scale and scope of their research. There will be a two-day workshop that focuses on how new technologies and capabilities that investigate the distribution and movement of animals can be linked to environmental states and environmental changes at the landscape and macrosystem scales. The workshop will bring together experts in the fields of remote sensing and animal detection with the goal of integrating the various technologies and lay the foundation for a review paper on the potential of combined techniques to answer important questions in ecology and conservation biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.