The Arctic Animal Movement Archive

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The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a collection of studies in Movebank that contain animal movement and bio-logging data from the Arctic and Subarctic. As of November 2019, this collection includes 201 studies that contain over 15 million locations of 96 species from 1991 to the present.

Movebank supports the management and sharing of data globally, and we recognize the Arctic as a region undergoing rapid change that has impacts around the world. 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 (shapefile available from https://www.amap.no/about/geographical-coverage), and Subarctic land regions represented as areas classified as "boreal forests/taiga" by the Nature Conservancy (shapefile available from http://maps.tnc.org/files/metadata/TerrEcos.xml).

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 or, for help adding data, compile your data and deployment information in documented files. For assistance adding data to the AAMA, or to have your existing study reviewed and added to the list of participating studies, contact curator Sarah Davidson at sdavidson@ab.mpg.de. 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 studies have been checked by the AAMA curator to ensure the data are accurately stored and include sufficient metadata.

• For those studies from which data are not publicly available, extra steps will be taken to ensure that owner contact information does not become obsolete.

Data users

The AAMA provides a source of Arctic-relevant on-animal sensor data 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

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. Also see our citation guidelines, general Movebank terms of use and user agreement. To search participating studies,

• Review the table below for studies relevant to your use.
• 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 Movebank studies are participating in the AAMA as of November 2019.