Federal or State Agency – Avian Knowledge Network

The following are some examples of the tools and resources in the AKN that state and federal agencies might use to answer some common questions:

My agency is responsible for overseeing development projects off the coasts and in the Great Lakes region, and need to know the locations where I can place projects that are best for avoiding and minimizing impacts to birds.

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AKN Phenology Tool – The Phenology tool allows the user to view abundance and relative probability of presence summaries throughout the year for birds in a particular region or project area. For a short web tutorial on this tool, please visit the Phenology Tool video tutorial.

Information for Planning and Conservation System (IPaC) – The IPaC tool allows users to view their project or activity’s potential impacts on U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Trust Resources, including endangered and threatened species and migratory bird species of concern. Migratory bird lists in IPaC and associated seasonal probability of presence graphs are generated using best available data on known bird occurrence via data points in the AKN. For a short web tutorial on this tool, please visit the IPaC Tool video tutorial.

Some other tools not connected to the AKN that might also be helpful include the following:

Northeast Ocean Data Portal – The Northeast Ocean Data Portal is a centralized, peer-reviewed source of data and interactive maps of the ocean ecosystem and ocean-related human activities in the northeastern United States. The maps on the Portal show the richness and diversity of the ecosystem and illustrate the many ways that humans and environmental resources interact. By providing user-friendly, centralized, and free access to data, information, and tools, the Portal facilitates decision making by a broad range of government agencies, industries, non-government organizations, academic entities, and individuals. Portal users can access data in a variety of ways: by theme, by making custom maps in the Data Explorer, or by directly downloading the data for personal use.

Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal -The Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal is an online toolkit and resource center that consolidates available data and enables state, federal and local users to visualize and analyze ocean resources and human use information such as fishing grounds, recreational areas, shipping lanes, habitat areas, and energy sites, among others.

MarineCadastre.gov – MarineCadastre.gov is an integrated marine information system that provides data, tools, and technical support for ocean and Great Lakes planning. MarineCadastre.gov was designed specifically to support renewable energy siting on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf but also is being used for other ocean-related efforts.

Great Lakes Stopover Map Tool – This tool maps potential stopover habitats across the region based on available GIS data layers. The maps were created by identifying attributes associated with stopover sites that could be mapped with regionally (US and Canada) available data layers, developing criteria to score these attributes, and then producing maps based on these scores to indicate the relative importance of stopover sites in our study area.

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My agency has bird survey data and they need a place to house it that is secure, but offers the opportunity for data analysis, data aggregation with other datasets, or data sharing with others if my agency desires that.

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State and Federal agencies can look into storing and maintaining their data in the AKN. There are many benefits to doing this since project owners are automatically given access to analyst tools that will allow them to view patterns and trends in their data. They will also have the ability, if desired, to share their data more publicly in tools like the AKN Phenology Tool, IPaC and Observations map to help make those tool results more robust, and help the rest of the bird conservation community! For already existing datasets, you can look into developing an API or Bulk Uploading your data. If your project is just getting under way, or once you bulk upload your existing dataset, you’d like to grow and maintain your dataset by entering data manually into the AKN interface, you can use the Project Leader toolset. Once your dataset is in AKN, adjusting sharing levels on data allows those data to be used in tool results like Phenology Tool, IPaC and the Observations Map. To get more information on how to enter your data into the AKN, see the information on the Upload, Enter and Manage Your Data webpage of the AKN.

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My agency is responsible for overseeing the development of an oil & gas facility in the Great Lakes area, and we need to see where these facilities could be having the greatest impact on birds, and birds of particular concern in particular, so that we can avoid those areas.

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AKN Phenology Tool – The Phenology tool allows the user to view abundance and relative probability of presence summaries throughout the year for birds in a particular region or project area. For a short web tutorial on this tool, please visit the Phenology Tool video tutorial.

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My agency is interested in looking at potential impacts from a certain type of development on a particular species of bird within a particular region. We have are able to approximate how many of that species might be impacted by the activity, but we’d like to be able to look at the best available information on the known population size of the bird on a variety of scales to ensure that our estimated impact will not jeapardize the population both in the region, and as a whole.

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Partner’s in Flight (PIF) Conservation Assessment Database – This database provides global and regional conservation assessments of each bird species that, among other uses, can be used to objectively assign regional and continental conservation priorities among birds. Currently, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies maintains PIF species assessment data on all bird species in the U.S. Canada, and Mexico.

Partner’s in Flight (PIF) Landbird Population Estimates Database – This database aims to: (1) provide users access to the estimates of landbird populations published in the North American Landbird Conservation Plan (Rich et al. 2004), which were based mainly on Breeding Bird Survey data from the 1990s: (2) allow users to view and download estimates for landbird populations at a variety of geographic scales, and (3) provide transparent access to the methodologies, assumptions, data sources, and species-specific correction factors used by Partners in Flight to create these estimates.

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My agency needs to do any one of the following in the area of the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, or Intermountain West:

Determine if bird populations are stable, increasing, decreasing, or if data are inconclusive and species-specific monitoring is needed. This information is mainly used to update our State Wildlife Action Plan and our State Sensitive Species list.
For project planning, determine which species occur in my management unit and population estimates for those species to see if any species of concern occur in the project area and estimate the potential population impact of species in the area.
Determine what proportion of grassland bird populations resides on my National Grassland during the breeding season. Are there any species of concern for which my Grassland plays a large role in population contribution?
Compare bird populations in my unit to the surrounding region to understand how the thinning treatments could be impacting bird populations, because my agency is conducting a lot of thinning treatments in my management unit.

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RMADC Data Exploration and Analysis Interface – The Rocky Mountain Avian Data Center (RMADC) hosts Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) and other data collected by collaborators in the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, and Intermountain West. It is intended to provide population estimates (both density and occupancy), approximate survey locations, and species counts to wildlife biologists, land managers, and other conservation practitioners who may use these data to inform management and conservation decisions. Population estimates are provided at a variety of scales and account for incomplete detectability of birds. The RMADC is hosted by Bird Conservancy of the Rockies and has been made possible through a broad partnership of state, federal, and non-governmental agencies.

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