System to Improve Sharing and Analysis of Best Available Bird Data Nearly Ready for Roll-out!

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. The system that was chosen for development to help the Council agencies satisfy their needs is the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN). The portal and associated tools that have been developed within the AKN, and which are being referred to as the AKN National Node, is schedule to be rolled out between January and February 2018. Read below for more details about the AKN and National Node. If you are interested in following the progress and roll-out of the National Node and its associated features and tools, please send an e-mail to nationalnode@gmail.com requesting to be added as a digest recipient.

Background on the 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.

About the National Node: 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; and to continue to augment the underlying collective dataset. Continuing to grow the dataset will improve its robustness and value across the nation for use in important bird conservation actions and decisions. The National Node effort will also provide some data summary and analysis tools that users can apply to the data, as well as a link to resources that Council agencies might find useful in fulfilling their bird conservation objectives. The National Node project also enables 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 (which is nearly complete), and another deliverable fully funded recently, which is the Data Shopping Tool. A Data Mapping Interface was also recently replicated from other AKN nodes and implemented in the National Node as an additional tool. To learn more about each deliverable, including current status and timeline, click on the links provided below.