Progress Steady on a System to Improve Sharing and Analysis of Best Available Bird Data

Federal agencies who conduct activities that could impact migratory birds and/or work to conserve migratory birds need and want best available bird data and decision support tools to help them with their decision making and conservation efforts for migratory birds. Funded by a number of federal agencies, an effort to satisfy this need, has been moving along steadily. The first phase of development is currently scheduled to be completed around late 2017/early 2018. The system that has been chosen for development to help the Council agencies satisfy their needs is the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN).

The AKN is an online system supported by over 100 partners sharing data, tools and solutions for bird conservation and management questions. The goal of the AKN is to increasingly improve awareness, purpose, access to, and use of best available bird monitoring and spatial data and decision support tools. These tools can provide insights at multiple scales in order to support the conservation of birds and their habitats and promote adaptive management based on best available science. The data within the AKN are dynamic and updated daily, monthly, quarterly and annually. In its current state, the AKN maintains several individual regional nodes, each of which offers a distinct set of data and decision support tools, which have been developed to meet the specific needs of the node contributors.

The goal for the AKN National Node is to support the aggregation of data from each of the existing regional nodes and make those data available through one national level node, as well as continue to add to these data to improve its robustness and value across the nation for use in important bird conservation actions and decisions. The National Node effort will provide some basic data analysis features and tools that users can access to view summaries or analysis of the data, and a link to resources and newsfeeds that Council agencies might find useful in fulfilling their bird conservation objectives. It will enable data within the AKN to be shared and visualized through the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Information for Planning and Conservation System (IPaC).

The project involves 11 core deliverables for the first phase of development. To learn more about each deliverable, including current status and timeline, click on the links provided below.