The Arctic Animal Movement Archive

The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a collection of studies in Movebank that contain animal movement and other animal-borne sensor data from the Arctic and Subarctic. As of May 2021, this collection includes 247 studies that contain over 47 million locations of 13,800 animals recorded from 1987 to the present.

Movebank is a global platform, and we recognize the Arctic as a region undergoing rapid climate and ecosystem changes that have impacts around the world. Animal movement data can tell us whether and how animals are responding to changes in the Arctic through altering their migrations and behaviors, and could provide remotely-sensed indicators of environmental conditions. We have developed the AAMA to strengthen efforts to archive, share and use Arctic-relevant data in Movebank to address urgent questions related to movement ecology, wildlife management and conservation, ecosystem monitoring and remote sensing in the Arctic. The AAMA also serves as a showcase for public and access-controlled data archiving that can meet data-sharing obligations for funding and publishing. Many studies are publicly available for exploration, and in all cases data owners can be contacted directly to discuss proposed uses.

AAMA boundary

The geographic scope of the AAMA defined as that of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, which includes marine areas, and Subarctic land regions represented as areas classified as "boreal forests/taiga" by the Nature Conservancy. This boundary, along with the density of participating animal locations as of Nov 2019, is shown below (see Davidson et al. 2020):

How to participate

Read below for how to participate in the AAMA by contributing participating datasets or initiating new collaborations and beneficial uses of the data.

Data owners

To include your own data from the Arctic and Subarctic in the AAMA, you can create a study and add data. Contact us for assistance. Beyond having data organized on Movebank, requirements for participation include

• Owners are committed to keeping the studies publicly discoverable and considering requests for the use of their data for collaborations.
• Participating data are quality checked to ensure the data are accurately stored and include sufficient metadata.
• If data are not publicly available, extra steps will be taken to ensure that owner contact information does not become obsolete.

When your data are prepared, complete our AAMA Participation Agreement to have your study reviewed and added to the list of participating studies.

Data users

The AAMA provides a source of on-animal sensor data from the Arctic and Subarctic and related expertise for a variety of beneficial uses, including but not limited to

• biodiversity and conservation assessments
• movement ecology research
• remote sensing and environmental models
• wildlife management and monitoring
• education and public engagement

Please read our tips on collaborations using Movebank for guidance on initiating projects and data sharing requests. As described above, the AAMA is composed of both public and controlled-access studies. While many studies are open to the public, we strongly urge users to contact data owners about proposed uses, as they will have valuable input about ecological context. Also see our citation guidelines, general Movebank terms of use and user agreement. Contact sdavidson@ab.mpg.de for help negotiating data sharing.

To search participating studies,

• Review the table below for studies relevant to your proposed use. The table contains links to each study for additional information.
• See Movebank's user manual for general instructions on browsing and accessing data. Searching for "AAMA" on the Tracking Data Map will filter your results for participating studies.

Funding and maintenance

Long-term support for the storage and curation of the AAMA in Movebank comes from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (read more about funding for Movebank). Initial development of the AAMA was funded by NASA's Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment. Movebank will support the addition of new AAMA studies and data, and the maintenance of contact information so that non-public studies become public, or stay publicly discoverable with current contact information for those who can address requests for use.

Contact

With questions or for assistance, contact the Movebank and AAMA data curator Sarah Davidson at sdavidson@ab.mpg.de.

Participating studies

These studies are participating in the AAMA as of November 2020. This summary includes data collected within and outside of the AAMA region.

Citation

To cite data contained within the AAMA, please see Movebank's citation guidelines. To cite the AAMA, please use

Davidson SC, Bohrer G, Gurarie E, LaPoint S, Mahoney PJ, Boelman NT, Eitel JUH, Prugh LR, Vierling LA, Jennewein J, et al. 2020. Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb7080

Image of caribou migration in Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska, from the U.S. National Park Service.