PNAMP Habitat Data Sharing Project – Leadership
Team Teleconference
NOTES
October 9, 2012
1:30-3:00 PDT
Agenda:
1:30
Welcome and introductions, overview of today’s meeting
1:40
Status updates for HDS activities from 2012 Workplan & discussion of next
steps
Activity A : Identification of a Short List of Priority Habitat Characteristics
Activity B: Data Exchange Template (DET) Prototype for Selected Habitat
Characteristics
Activity C: Habitat Data Exchange: Implementing prototype habitat
exchange templates and tackling complex standardization issues
Activity D: Needs Assessment for Habitat Data Sharing
Activity E: Macroinvertebrate Data as a Component of HDS
Activity F: Remote Sensing as a New/Improved Source of Habitat
Characterization Data at Multiple Scales
Activity G: Habitat Data Discovery
HDS Workplan for 2013
3:00
Adjourn
In attendance: Kara Analuf-Dunn, Karen Adams, Michael Newsom, Jennifer O’Neal, Sonja Schaller,
Leska Fore, Charlie Stein, Bruce Schmidt, Keith Dublanica, Mike Banach, Jen Bayer, Amy Puls,
Kathryn Thomas, Sarah Beldin
Discussion Today (action items in green):
Goal Today: Consolidate activities for FY 2013 into 2 major activities with different tasks. The core
team provided a status update on each activity on the 2012 workplan, followed by discussion of
potential next steps. See presentation at: http://www.pnamp.org/document/4030.
Plan: Receive HDS leadership team input today, write a draft workplan, submit to leadership team
for review, then run past steering committee in November.
If you are new to the Leadership Team and would like additional background on this effort please contact
Kathryn Thomas (PNAMP) at Kathryn_a_Thomas@usgs.gov.
Feedback on Activity A – Short list of Priority Habitat Characteristics
No formal activity for next year
Top three attributes (large wood, percent fines, substrate particle size) are a manageable place to
being to develop a DET.
Feedback on Activity B – Development of a DET (prototype for selected habitat characteristics)
X Group will change from use of the term data exchange template (DET) to ‘Data Exchange
Standard’. Standard better describes the outcome.
Feedback on Activity C – Creating Habitat Indices
Does anyone have specific use cases? We need more information to understand what data is being
shared or desires to share data.
Eventually the region needs to do a ‘roll-up’, but we haven’t come up with a really sound way of
doing that. CHaMP is narrowing the number of metrics down and they are landing on something
that might be used to create an indicator, but there are not many examples where the science is
sound yet. We should look into doing this, but we should be looking for opportunities to conduct a
test or experiment as to how indicators are derived.
There are problems with scale (spatial, temporal) and there are relational problems related to
cause and effect. It would be useful to define what we want to get out of an indicator (water quality
or riparian function?). Maybe we need to come up with a list.
It would be helpful to ID a group of people who are experts in this and ask them if they would
volunteer (or fund them) to develop a plan for how we come up with a list and a test that is needed
to verify that metrics can scale up to indicators. This would be similar to what we do with ISTM
Habitat; we have experts who come together for 1-2 hrs at a time, weekly, for a long period (a year).
This may be something that would be helpful for developing indicators to work slowly behind the
scenes, then we can vet this to a larger community in a workshop setting. Structure for indicators is
laid out well, but when you start talking about the function behind the indicator, there is a lot of
work that needs to be done (i.e. answering the question: what is the object of the function?)
X HDS LT participants encouraged to submit ideas for use cases for consideration in the 2013
workplan (see notes under Activity C in presentation).
Feedback on Activity D – Needs assessment for Habitat Data Sharing
On hold for now until use cases are identified.
Feedback on Activity E – Macroinvertebrate Data Sharing
NBAW session structured so as to define plans for regional Standard Taxonomic Effort agreement
PNAMP core team is proposing a session at the Oregon AFS in Bend in Feb. to examine
Macroinvertebrate/Habitat Health/Fish Productivity relationship.
This topic has been defined very broadly. We need to examine what this means. We need to engage
more fish biologists in this. Perhaps we need a similar process to the one discussed earlier (experts
If you are new to the Leadership Team and would like additional background on this effort please contact
Kathryn Thomas (PNAMP) at Kathryn_a_Thomas@usgs.gov.
convene 1-2 hrs each week for a year) so we can work on this topic OR we can discuss the linkages
between these 3 pieces in a workshop setting (AFS in Bend).
We will have to clearly identify what we mean by ‘habitat health’ and ‘fish productivity’ and identify
examples of how we could relate habitat health and fish productivity.
We need to discuss whether we accept this simple conceptual model and how do we assess what
this means. We could develop more conceptual diagrams as well. Michael Newsom will help out
with AFS workshop.
X PNAMP will assemble a focus group of folks who are interested in the Macroinvertebrate/Habitat
Health/Fish Productivity relationship to plan for Oregon AFS in Bend in February.
Feedback on Activity F – Remote Sensing
None
Feedback on Activity G – Habitat Data Discovery
None
X PNAMP will write up a draft plan for 2013 and distribute to the leadership team for feedback so
we can agree on the workplan by the PNAMP steering committee meeting in November.
If you are new to the Leadership Team and would like additional background on this effort please contact
Kathryn Thomas (PNAMP) at Kathryn_a_Thomas@usgs.gov.