Data Management Framework for the CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network and Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program
The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP) ultimately depends on its ‘on-the-ground’ monitoring networks to deliver status and trends information on various elements of Arctic biodiversity.
One of the CBMP’s key monitoring partners is the CircumArctic Rangifer Monitoring and Assessment Network (CARMA). CARMA is an Arctic Council endorsed initiative to create a monitoring network of all wild Rangifer (Caribou/Reindeer) subspecies. The program’s mission is “through cooperation, both geographically and across disciplines, to monitor and assess the impacts of global change on the human/Rangifer system across the CircumArctic”[1]. More specifically, its goal is to be:
- a collaboration among communities, scientists, and governments to exchange information on the environment, and status and use of wild Rangifer populations across the north;
- a means of synthesizing existing information from community monitoring, climate stations, remote sensing, field studies, socio-economic studies and development activity;
- a source for reporting standard methods and protocols currently being used to monitor populations, the environment and the human activities within the human-Rangifer system;
- a way of reporting on the status and changes in the human-Rangifer system.
For CARMA and CBMP to be successful, a large amount of information, in a wide variety of formats, must be coordinated, integrated and disseminated. It is envisioned that each of these two networks will be accessed through a web portal, with the CARMA network being one of many regional and/or global networks feeding into the CBMP’s web portal (see Figure 1). It is critical that a well thought out data management framework be developed in advance in order to ensure effective and efficient management, integration and dissemination of biodiversity information amongst and between both networks.
Figure 1. Conceptual model of the CBMP web portal, showing the relationship between CBMP and CARMA.
A key
challenge in developing CARMA and CBMP will be managing the data associated
with each of these networks; in particular, managing the flow of data into and
between them. A roadmap for data management—referred to here as a data management framework—will be
critical in creating the foundation on which each of these networks will be
developed.
The CARMA/CBMP
Data Management Framework pilot will provide an overview of the recommended
data management framework for each of CARMA and CBMP and, more specifically,
functional descriptions of the data management frameworks, including framework
objectives, anticipated users, and the functions it will perform along with
design recommendations, review of existing data and metadata standards and
recommendations on application architecture.
[1] Current CARMA web site: www.rangifer.net/carma
CARMA-CBMP-data-management-framework-2007-08-01.pdf
