Data Management

As part of the National Park Service’s effort to “improve park management through greater reliance on scientific knowledge,” a primary role of the Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program is to collect, organize, and make available natural resource data and to contribute to the Service’s institutional knowledge by facilitating the transformation of data into information through analysis, synthesis, and modeling. To meet these objectives, each I&M Network needs a decision support system that effectively stores, maintains, analyzes, and distributes the data, information and products of scientific work conducted at each of the network parks. Thus, a foundation of the I&M program is the strong emphasis placed on data and information management for which networks are expected to devote at least 30 percent of available resources.

There are three primary sources of natural resources data of interest to the Southeast Coast Network (SECN) vital signs monitoring program:

Vital Signs Monitoring Data
Data collected during implementation of the long-term monitoring program following peer-reviewed protocols and standard operating procedures. Data collection is conducted on an ongoing (continuous), cyclic (once every few years), or synoptic (one point in time) schedule.

Project Data
Data that are collected following standardized methods during a distinct time period with no expectation of recurrence following those same methods. Examples include baseline inventories, data collected during protocol development, and data collected during research by network, park, or cooperating personnel. Legacy data sets are also considered project data.

Incidental Observation Data
Data collected following no standardized protocol (e.g. opportunistic species observations).

The information management strategy is described in the Southeast Coast Network Information Management and Archiving Plan.The SECN information management plan has been developed to serve as a working reference document to guide users in establishing standardized data management practices and to institute information management as an integral part of vital signs monitoring. The overarching goal of the SECN information management strategy is to ensure the quality, interpretability, security, longevity and availability of ecological data and information resulting from previous and ongoing relevant scientific investigations. These elements are critical to the success of the SECN Vital Signs Monitoring Program and the service-wide I&M program overall. Therefore, all aspects of information management are discussed within this document – ranging from data collection through reporting, to data dissemination and archiving.