Avian Knowledge Network site update

[Melanie Colón]

Dear colleagues,

 

The Avian Knowledge Network (AKN) is excited to announce the launch of

its newly updated website: http://avianknowledge.net and requests your

participation in joining us in this unique and very successful

endeavor to conserve birds.

 

The AKN grew out of a series of discussions more than a decade ago,

which in 2006 resulted in a grant awarded by the National Science

Foundation (NSF) to fund the network’s foundational infrastructure.

>From that small beginning, the AKN has grown far beyond our

expectations to become the primary source of bird monitoring data in

the Western Hemisphere. One component of the AKN, eBird, is the most

successful avian citizen science project in the planet and includes

hundreds of millions of records. Other components (called AKN regional

and thematic nodes), such as the California Avian Data Center, the

Rocky Mountain Avian Data Center, and the Midwest (U.S.) Avian Data

Center, host over 20 million records from several hundred research

projects, including point count, banding, nest success, area search,

and distance sampling data. An Eastern (U.S.) Avian Data Center is

nearing launch, and will cover an area from the Caribbean islands to

the state of Maine and west to Texas. Some nodes, such as Nature

Counts, have extended their capacity to capture monitoring data from

other taxa.

 

In the beginning, the AKN focused on gathering and describing critical

datasets for archival and research. More recently, the AKN has

included an emphasis on the role of nodes as collaborative

science-based systems where data, spatially-explicit research

products, and web-based technologies are integrated into tools that

provide information to natural resource management decision-makers.

Combined, we are striving to implement existing and new science-based

data standards, provide recommendations for best monitoring practices,

and encourage innovation and use of data management, visualization,

analysis, and decision support tools. True to our name and commitment

to collaboration, transparency, and efficiency, we share data, lessons

learned, and development costs of tools across AKN nodes.

 

We eagerly invite you to visit http://avianknowledge.net to learn more

about the AKN, explore some of the nodes and tools, and consider

participating in the AKN.

 

Best,

The AKN coordinating team