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Ministry of Environment

Project Design

The purpose here is to discuss inventory project design from a data management perspective. Poorly designed inventory projects, lack of rigour in data collection, and awkwardly documented datasets can all contribute to the loss of meaning over time. By considering data management as you design your project, you will produce a set of data that is pertinent, easy to analyze using computer applications, and with a very long half-life. The data that you gather will be useful to future generations.

Design to store data in the provincial system

The central repository for storing wildlife inventory information is the Species Inventory Database (SPI). The database was designed to emulate the features of an inventory project. The structure of the database reinforces sound inventory design. For example, the project table contains general information about the project. Each project has one or more surveys and the surveys occur in one or more study areas. The database has tables to store information unique to surveys and study areas respectively. A project may be systematically designed using blocks, transects, or sample stations and wildlife observations can be recorded within those sample units. The “ Design Component” table stores information about the sample units while the Wildlife Observation and “DC Visit” tables store observation data and the date of the observation respectively.

The rest of this document describes inventory design while highlighting data management via the Species Inventory Database. Hopefully people will be able to follow it in a step-wise fashion to produce a well organized inventory plan with the additional benefit of meshing well with the database. The following steps outline the design process:

  • Documenting the project metadata
  • Defining the surveys
  • Determining sample unit type and selecting a template for data collection
  • Conducting field work
  • Analyzing the data
  • Writing the report

 

1. Documenting the project metadata

An inventory project may consist of one or more surveys, within one or more study areas, and each survey can be organized in its own unique fashion. Your project may be a short term activity for a targeted species in a specific area, a very long term monitoring plan for multiple areas within an entire region or anything in between.

Generally speaking, clustering several inventory surveys within a larger project makes sense if the surveys pertain to a common goal (ungulate aerial census for a region) or if the projects are related through funding. Whether you choose to cluster your inventory surveys within one project or you decide to make each survey its own separate project is entirely up to you. What does matter is that you accurately document and maintain records of the exact nature of your inventory work.

Metadata is "data about the data" and it will allow you to reliably file and track your project. Metadata also thoroughly explains the methods used to capture the data, the level of reliability, and the limits of the inferences that can be drawn from the data. Much of this sort of information is contained within the report. In a sense the report constitutes the metadata for the datasets that will be stored in the database.

For an inventory project, the important tracking metadata are:

  • Project ID
  • Project Name
  • Project Agency
  • Funding Agency
  • Funding Agency ID
  • Project Coordinator
  • Start Date
  • End Date
  • Region
  • Project Location
  • Location Description

When you register your project in the database, you will be asked to provide this information. As soon as the project is registered it will become visible to the tracking system. This means that you can find it easily through the search engine. All reports and data will be clustered together under the project name and ID number. The data will never be seen in isolation of the report and supporting documentation that you have generated.

2. Defining the surveys

Within your inventory project, you may wish to define one or several surveys. For example, if you have a spade-foot toad project that covers several study areas within your region, you could opt to define more than one survey because you will use different survey teams. If you are performing a monitoring project over the course of 5 years, each season may be a new survey. You might also define your project to have 100 blocks within your study area and the entire inventory will be considered one survey. You could consider spring counts and fall counts to be separate surveys within a project or each year of an ongoing study could be considered a separate survey and all data collected during the year would be pooled. The precise data and time for all observations is recorded despite how surveys are defined so no information is lost or masked regardless of how you define your surveys.

In summary, a survey is defined by the objectives, the target species, the inventory method used, and the discrete time that the survey occurs in. Exactly how you designate surveys is not critical as long as it is logical.

At this point you will:

  • list the specific objectives of the survey
  • define the study area
  • define the survey method type (simple reconnaissance, game census, general survey, telemetry, results by area) and level of intensity of the survey
  • determine the spatial units for sampling

Listing the Objectives

Write out in simple English what you want to learn from the inventory in list form. Try to write objectives in such a way that success or failure can be measured. By doing this you will have to be concise and you will clarify what your design must accomplish.

Define the study area

You should define the study area and the spatial units for the inventory using either predefined units such as wildlife management units or via GIS. The shape files containing your study area and spatial units will become a part of your submission package.

Use Arcmap to outline the study area in a shape file. You may create your own polygons by clustering or using forest cover polygons, wildlife management units, regional boundaries, lake boundaries, or you can simply draw your own. You can hand draw maps but you will eventually have to submit the map in electronic form as a *.jpg or a *.pdf file however any maps that are not in a GIS format cannot be spatially linked to your data within the system.

Define the survey method type

Survey method type defines the broad category of the inventory. Some surveys are very simple in their design while others are more complex and involve systematic sampling. Systematic sampling will utilize either blocks, transects, or sample stations as the sample unit within which observations are made. You will also need to determine the level of intensity of the survey. Do you wish to look for the presence of a species, determine relative abundance, or calculate the absolute abundance for your sample units?

We support the following method types at this time:

Simple Reconnaissance

You are looking for the presence of a single species. You have one study area and you are going to sample the most likely habitats (strategic sampling). You are not concerned with determining which habitat the species prefers. You just want to know if the species is present in this area.

Game Census

You are conducting a wildlife census. Your main concern is to determine relative or absolute abundance of a species. You may also want to determine age and sex ratios. For example, your project might be long term coordinated monitoring of a hunted population. You may be using systematic sampling using blocks, transects, or sample stations. Ungulate aerial census and spotlight counts are specific examples of inventories that use this method type.

General Survey for Locations, Behaviour, or Sign

You are interested in finding the locations, habitat features, and/or sign, of a species. You may use a systematic sampling design using blocks, transects, or sample stations. You may be interested in gathering data for species/habitat modeling. Call playback, ungulate track counts, nest surveys, mist netting, and pellet counts are all examples of this type of inventory.

Telemetry

You wish to track the location of individual radio-collared animals. The radio-collars may be VHF or GPS collars.

Results by area

You have performed total counts of an area, performed a population estimate, calculated age and sex ratios and you wish to portray the results as a function of an area.

Special methods

Some rare and endangered species working groups have specific data that they wish to be incorporated into the Land Resource Data Warehouse. There are very few groups that require special methods.

During the registration process, you will to provide the following information for each survey:

  • Survey Name
  • Survey Objectives
  • Study Area Name
  • Study Area Description
  • Method Type
  • Survey Intensity
  • Primary Target Species
  • Secondary Target Species
  • Surveyors Names
  • Survey Start Date

 

3. Select a template for data submission

Once you have characterized your survey, you will need to select the appropriate Excel data template. You can obtain the data templates here. The data templates support the method types described above.

After you have chosen your template, you can customize it to some extent. The yellow fields in the templates are required for successful data loading. Do not alter them or remove them. All other fields are optional. You may remove any that you do not wish to use but you must not alter any of the template field names otherwise the data will fail to load and you will be asked to correct the error.

You may add data fields to any template. The fields you add will be stored in the template copy that will be archived in the database along with your report. Only the predefined fields that are in a fresh template are loaded to the Land Resource Data Warehouse spatial views. The predefined fields of the templates are combined with project metadata to provide a means of spatially searching for species observations via ArcMap and IMap once the template is loaded into the Species Inventory Database.

4. Conduct your field work

It is better to conduct your field work after you have completed project design and organized for data management. You should have already thoroughly researched your field method and set up all the logistics for your field work by this time. You can use the template that you download from our website to build custom field forms to suit your needs. Using ArcPad, you can fill in the templates as you work. Some people like to use their own templates and then transcribe their data into the standard templates. At any rate, you should have to manually type your data into an electronic form only once.

5. Analyze your data

You may add worksheets to the data template workbook in order to analyze your data. You may also use additional workbooks to perform analyses to keep the data template from being altered in any way. If you designed your dataset properly, you will be able to use pivot tables to summarize the data. You can include any analyses with your submission if you desire.

6. Write the report

If you are conducting standard census inventories for wildlife management, you may refer to RISC manuals and use a summary report form to file a report. All other reports should be written using standard scientific format. To find information about report formats click here.

Conclusion

A complete submission consists of:

  • Project Registration and survey definition via the submission site
  • A completed data template including additional user defined fields and analyses added to the template workbook
  • The report
  • shape files of the study area and any sampling units.
  • Additional documents such as photographs, jpeg maps, powerpoint presentations, copies of public relations material and so on.

If you are intending on loading your project information into the Species Inventory Database, you can benefit by keeping data management in mind as you design your project. You will have far fewer troubles with the data when it is time to submit. Using the system will also encourage you to more stringently design your projects because the database structure actually mimics sound inventory design.