Tools for Collecting, Archiving, and Visualizing Bat Monitoring Data

NWCC held a webinar on two tools intended to help monitor, track, and document bat movements and populations across the continent.

• North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) presented by Brian Reichert, Ph. D., U.S. Geological Survey

The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) is a partnership between local, federal, state, and provincial agencies working in tandem with NGOs and universities to gather monitoring information to assess changes in bat populations using standardized monitoring protocols, with the goal of creating a continental-wide program to monitor bats at local to range-wide scales that will provide reliable data to promote effective conservation and long-term viability of bat populations across the continent.

• Application of the Bat Acoustic Monitoring Portal (BatAMP) for Wind Energy Development presented by Theodore J. Weller, USDA Forest Service

The Bat Acoustic Monitoring Portal (BatAMP) is an open-access, web-based tool that enables upload and display of echolocation monitoring data. BatAMP allows results from local echolocation monitoring or research efforts to be dual-purposed to help understand regional- or continental-scale phenomena such as migratory connectivity. As such, it is a valuable source of data to help address conservation issues—such as white-nose syndrome and wind energy development—that arise over multiple years and wide geographic scales.

Results from hundreds of thousands of detector-nights across 26 states and 2 provinces have been uploaded to BatAMP so far, dwarfing all previous compilations of bat species occurrence. Echolocation monitoring for bats is conducted at most proposed wind energy facilities. Contribution of datasets from wind energy projects will help ecologists to better understand where and when bats are active on the landscape across the continent and allow companies to view their results in the context of efforts conducted in more conventional monitoring locations. As such, BatAMP, has relevance for planning wind energy development at scales ranging from the individual project to continental level.