Animal Telemetry Data

Introduction

This section describes the process of submitting animal telemetry (e.g., Argos satellite) data to an IOOS RA portal.

Terminology

Telemetry data are location estimates about an animal’s movements through space and time. The data are created by a device attached to the animal. Often the data are time-stamped location estimates transmitted by a satellite-enabled tag using the Argos satellite network. The Argos network provides these data feeds to organizations or companies that build and sell tags, called tag vendors.

These data feeds can be shared with the Animal Telemetry Network Data Assembly Center (ATN DAC) directly, or researchers can obtain data from tag vendors themselves and share them with the ATN DAC as data files. Either way, the ATN DAC serves as a centralized place to stage telemetry data for visualization, publication, and archive with a data repository.

Any researcher from the animal telemetry community is welcome to submit data to the ATN DAC. Contributing your data to the ATN DAC is a way to share your research with the general public, as well as other researchers in the animal telemetry community and beyond.

Additionally, submitting data to the ATN DAC may help you meet funding obligations for public data sharing, including federal Public Access to Research Results (PARR) requirements.

For help following the steps below, please contact Megan McKinzie, the ATN Data Coordinator, at mmckinzie@mbari.org.

Data Submitted through a Satellite Tag Vendor

If your telemetry data can be made available to the ATN DAC through a satellite tag vendor (e.g., Wildlife Computers), follow these steps:

Step 1: Register your tags

  1. Visit the ATN DAC Registration page here: https://dacregistration.atn.ioos.us/

  2. Sign up for an account (or log in if you already have one)

  3. Click New Project Metadata

  4. Using the form, enter your project-level metadata (i.e., Title, Abstract, Purpose, and Contact info)

  5. Using the form, enter the information for each deployment associated with that project (e.g., PTT, species, deployment start/stop date/time)

After you submit this information, the ATN Data Coordinator will review your project and contact you with questions.

Step 2: Grant the ATN DAC access to your data feeds

  1. Contact your tag vendor (e.g., Wildlife Computers)

  2. Authorize the ATN DAC account to access the data feeds

Once your project and deployment metadata have been finalized, your project will appear in the ATN DAC Data Portal.

Note

Note that data feeds made available to the ATN DAC while a tag is actively deployed on an animal will appear in the Real-time tag deployments layer in the ATN Data Portal’s map interface. These feeds will also be listed as associated with your project in the ATN Data Portal’s project catalog.

Data Submitted Directly to the DAC

If your data aren’t available from a satellite tag vendor, you can still submit to the ATN DAC by following the steps outlined in the IOOS ATN DAC documentation.