Developing an Arctic Animal Telemetry Network for Enhanced Ecosystem Monitoring

1. Rosa Meehan

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. Preliminary animal-centric question list • Collaborative/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

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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?

10. 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?

11. International Russia Canada Alaska • Shared animal populations • Long history of collaboration • Need to tackle constraints on sharing information

12. Courtesy of Chad Jay and Tony Fishbach, USGS Alaska Science Center http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/walrus/index.html Jay, 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.

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