Rosa Meehan

Goal• Develop an Arctic Animal Telemetry Network

Purpose• Increase coastal and ocean observation• Facilitate data access• Enhance collaboration• Enable broadly synthetic studies

• Not just a data archive or a simple display of animal tracks – specifically incorporate animal location and behavior into spatially and temporally related databases that allow coordinated and collaborative investigations across disciplines

Developing Science Questions• Gather info and knowledge on similar networks• Determine goals of participants and stakeholders

Challenge: define what biological ocean observing data will best meet the needs of multiple users

Science questions• Animal-centric questions• Oceanographic questions (that could benefit from animal-borne

sensor data)

What do stakeholders care about?

• Marine Operations• Support safe shipping and energy development, and improved spill response and

search and rescue operation

• Coastal and Offshore Hazards• Improve ability to forecast and address changing storm and ice conditions, and their

impacts on coastal communities

• Ecosystems, Fisheries and Water Quality• Contribute to integrated ecosystem assessments with sustained monitoring of key

biological, chemical and physical variables

• Climate Variability and Change• Track changing ocean conditions over time, especially ocean acidification, sea level

rise, temperature, salinity, ad sea ice

Preliminary animal-centric question listCollaborative/synthetic questions:

• Overlapping distribution and migration paths?

• Note that for some animals we lack basic information.

• Need seasonal components (e.g., ice movements) and long-term components (related to climate change and associated effects on ice and oceanography)

• What habitats are important (e.g., hot spots, shared migratory corridors, niche partitioning)?

• What environmental variables are predictive?

• Population Changes; Habitat Loss and Shifts; Changes in Timing of Migration & Reproduction; Food Web Impacts

Additional discussion topics

• Potential to use all types of animal data (aerial survey, acoustics, etc.)

• Geographic scope

• Desire to move beyond data repository/spontaneous syntheses to fund and implement large-scale collaborative project with additional tag deployments and support for broadly synthetic analyses that reach across species and disciplines

Additional discussion topics (from Josh)• Objective/Mission

• Objectives of this effort? Match/differ from National IOOS ATN objectives?

• Prioritize objectives – to assist in allocation of limited resources (time and

money)

• Tangible end products

• Scale/Scope

• geographic boundaries

• temporal range

• taxa of interest

• Data Contribution

• Participants?

• Actions to encourage participation?

Additional discussion topics (from Josh)• Data Ownership and Sharing

• Existing models for data ownership and sharing? Establish a custom model?

• Federal or state agency participation may be impacted by existing rules, regulations, polices, laws and other red tape related to release of government data

• Funding and Allocation of Time

• Funding sources (external and agency internal)

• Target time frame

Additional discussion topics (from Phillip)• Data goals for Arctic ATN?

• simplify data management, reduce cost, manage and improve quality?

• Use existing - or innovate, develop new data design and methods, data

research?

• synergize by working together? rather than just save effort, do you want to

work together in order to build greater-than-sum data capabilities?

• goal or requirement to make data public widely? or just share internally

with the group? or not a driver for sharing outside the individual program?

• enhance data life cycle: path from origination to application to archiving.

Security - data life cycle repeatable and reliable.

• modeling goals: new kinds? drivers? external demand for data/model

output? internal goals for models for research questions? modeling

technologies known, or in research? Modelers? - scientists? students?

Additional discussion topics (from Phillip)• Program questions

• research vs operational: distinction is between known, repeatable tasks

suitable for standard procedures, vs activities dominated by innovation and

not yet standardizable

• If strong research component, are there operational aspects that are

repeatable, and suitable for standardization?

• activities built around single institution, or multiple? Single funder or

bundled? How do funding dynamics influence data decisions?

• Goals for a regional group:

• opportunities for common practices, cost saving, skill specialization, joint

problem-solving, joint products

• Is goal just to have a support community - some sharing of insights and

skills, but not necessarily research and product collaboration?

International

• Shared animal populations• Long history of collaboration• Need to tackle constraints on sharing information

RussiaAlaska Canada

Courtesy of Chad Jay and Tony Fishbach, USGS Alaska Science Centerhttp://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/walrus/index.htmlJay, C. V., Fischbach, A.S., Kochnev, A.A., 2012. Walrus areas of use in the Chukchi Sea during sparse sea ice cover, journal article, Marine Ecology Progress Series, 466, doi: 10.3354/meps10057.

https://www.erma.unh.edu/arctic/erma.html#x=-165.88256&y=69.48068&z=5&layers=13439+12921+13333+12920