Subject: Re[2]: Data Collection Standards

From: Sam Droege <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 13:51:49 MST

Jim Herndon made several excellent points regarding entry of butterfly
     data for transect counts.  I think most of these are on the money, but
     would suggest the following modifications:

     By the way, for those of you interested in the project, I will be
     sending out the draft details on how to run the surveys this week.  I
     encourage and am open to comments on all aspects of the study.

     I am thinking of a field data sheet similar to the one published in
     Pollard's book.  Those sheets consist of some header material (date,
     time, observer, location, etc.) followed by lines of species
     information (species name, counts within subsections, and a total
     count)

     In the office we would assign a unique number to each site doing a
     survey.  That number would consist of the phips code for the state or
     province followed by an arbitrary number assigned in order of their
     arrival.  If this becomes an actual monitoring program we would
     definitely want to have a lat long, but for this initial test just
     knowing the state/province is, I think, fine.

     Rather than using confidence levels I was thinking that if an observer
     can't definitely (100%) id the species they should put it in a
     category such as:  skipper species, hairstreak species, etc.  That way
     novices and experts can equally participate and we can use the
     relative numbers in species categories as an indication of the
     relative expertise of the participant.

     Name-wise, my thought was to use NABA English names as the standard,
     because of their greater friendliness to the amateur.  In the long-run
     a program for monitoring butterflies will need both standard names and
     numbers for each species.

     File structure for a long-term monitoring program might follow our
     other programs and look something like this:

     File Type One (Location Information):

     Survey Number, Survey Name, Lat-long, ...and anything else that
     doesn't change from year-to-year.

     File Type Two (Observer Information)

     Survey Number, year, date, observer, weather, start-time, etc.

     File Type Three (Species Information)

     Survey Number, Species Number, Date (if the count is run more than
     once a year), Count (could include subsection counts)

     Information in a checklist program would largely follow the same
     pattern.

     sam

   0<    0-      0<    0-      0<    0-      0<
->>)   ->>)   ->>)   ->>)   ->>)   ->>)   ->>)
  L      L      L      L      L      L      L

 Sam Droege  [email-masked]
 w 301-497-5840 h 410-798-6759 fax 301-497-5784
 NBS, 12100 Beech Forest Dr., Laurel, Md 20708

I bet with every Wind that blew
Till Nature in chagrin
Employed a Fact to visit me
And scuttle my Balloon-
  -Dickinson