LaMNA Data Services

What We Are Doing For You, Our Partners

LaMNA has developed a process to fully document, archive, and then extract all data from any bird monitoring dataset into a common, easily shared format – Avian Knowledge Network's (AKN) Bird Monitoring Data Exchange. Read more about securing your data with LaMNA below .

In addition, LaMNA and the AKN are developing visualization and analysis tools to assist researchers and managers study the data, and generate and test hypotheses based on pattern discoveries. These are written in open-source languages and made so that can be readily shared among collaborators and with any external user. The combined temporal and spatial scales in the data, and tools for examining and analyzing the data, have not before been available to researchers and managers with this level of simplicity and consistency. Data provided through LaMNA will be immediately available to the data owners for analyses and visualizations with these tools. Read more about the LaMNA data sharing policy below.

We are also developing tools to help our cooperators track bird bands they send to banders and for banders to enter data in the field. Please see our "Data Tools" page for more details.

How We Are Doing It

LaMNA’s data management process is guaranteed to preserve valuable bird monitoring datasets, along with all the information needed to understand them, in a manner that makes them compatible to many other monitoring datasets and ready for web applications and data mining.

We outline our data processes in the narrated Power Point slide show "LaMNA Incoming Dataset Processing Flow". It illustrates how we track and process data that we receive from our partners. This is an automated presentation, so it will start and forward between slides on its own.

• If you have problems starting the program directly, please right-click the link and save the file to your computer for viewing
• If you prefer to read a transcript with the slides, please click here for a pdf version.

Data Sharing Policy

We want our partners to be assured that we will treat their datasets with the utmost respect. LaMNA wants to promote the use of avian monitoring data, but within the bounds of the intellectual ownership rights of our partners. We recognize that the more data are used, the higher their value, and this is the ultimate reason why we are making great efforts to provide data services to our partners. Please read our Data and Analysis Tool Sharing Policy, which details how the data that you submit to our node may be utilized, both for downloading by users and when accessed by online analysis tools. It also details the five levels of access under which our partners may opt to archive data at LaMNA.

How You Can Partner with LaMNA and the AKN

Banding Data

We are happy to report that we are now accepting banding data from our member organizations. We have already uploaded data from the Klamath Bird Monitoring Network, which can be seen on the AKN Datasets site as "LaMNA - Klamath Bird Monitoring Network Banding Data." Several other organizations have also contributed data which are currently being processed.

If you are interested in submitting banding data, please contact Linda Long. We also have a short questionnaire you can fill out and submit that will give us some basic information to start archiving your data. Don't forget to check out the Data Sharing Policy above.

Census Data

We are also accepting census data for archiving. We have already uploaded census data from the Klamath Bird Monitoring Network, which can be seen on the AKN Datasets site at "Klamath Bird Monitoring Network Point Counts."

If you are interested in submitting census data through LaMNA, please contact us for further information. Alternatively, members can archive their data directly with eBird or the AKN. Please see the information and links below on how you can get started.

• EBird currently allows birders to enter observations using two methods: entering individual observations through their interactive web site, or uploading data files using their web tools. Click here to read more about eBird.
• The Avian Knowledge Network archives larger and more complex census data sets. If you are interested in archiving census data with AKN, please see their information on contributing data at http://www.avianknowledge.net/content/contribute.

Looking for Lost, or Nearly-lost Data

There are many datasets that are on the verge of being lost, whether from the closing of banding stations, short-term research such as graduate projects, or other reasons. We have discovered several of these and are currently archiving those data. Members who know of other data that need to preserved are encouraged to contact us.