We live in a data-obsessed society. Business, sports, politics, you name it, are increasingly reliant on copious amounts of quantitative metrics and analytics to drive investment and optimize decision making. The government is no different. During my internship, I have observed a number of initiatives at the USFWS aimed at collecting, standardizing, and making available a variety of different datasets that can inform the agencies conservation mission. In most cases, these data already exist but they are not readily accessible across the agency, so efforts are focused on creating centralized archives that scientists and regulators can access.

For my summer project, I have been tasked with building a database of species ranges and restoration projects and spatially visualizing their overlap. I have been busy tracking down data sources to realize this objective. This has involved many meetings with scientists across the USFWS to understand existing databases and help delineate a strategy to fulfill my project’s goals.

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am focusing my efforts on at-risk species. I have found that many of these species, especially invertebrate animals, have very poorly understood ranges. To craft a best approximation of these species’ ranges, I turned to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), an international open-access database of species occurrence records. GBIF has been a tremendous resource for determining where poorly studied species have been documented.

The other component of the project is determining the location of NRDAR (that is the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration, the program I am working for) restoration activities. While these restoration activities are well documented, the relevant case information and geospatial data was not easily accessible in one location. That changed recently with the launch of the Damage Assessment and Restoration Tracking System (DARTS) administered by the Department of Interior. I collaborated with the technical team developing this database to acquire the restoration data that I need.

It is exciting to see the increasing focus on data management and accessibility. Open-source data sources, like GBIF and DARTS, are an especially welcome development as they increase the availability of scientific information to the public.

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program: Directorate Fellows Program

Location: USFS Headquarters, Washington Office