Data Holdings and Publication Processes at OTN

A description of (1) the types of data products available to OTN-held projects, and (2) how data is publicly distributed when a researcher requests their project data becomes public

Types of Data

There are multiple endpoints for data publication, depending on the type of record. Public or Unrestricted data, and Private or Restricted data.

PUBLIC Data Products and Endpoints

The public data products are available to any user, without inputting credentials. Use of public data is constrained by the CC-By license.  Public data are available on Project Metadata pages (eg. NSBS) as well as through discovery directories.

Deployment and Data Collaborators

All acoustic receiver metadata are made public as soon as is practical (information about the deployments, offloads, and recoveries of listening stations). The detection data retrieved by these operations are not included in the information that is immediately publicized.

These are provided on:

  • the OTN Data Portal. On the Project Metadata Page (Related URLs section) and the All Public Data page (under the discovery directory), by project filtered GeoServer links.
  • stations.kml - products list location, time and status of known stations
  • deployments.csv - products list details of instrument deployment and recovery at known stations

Tracker and Data Collaborators

As stated in the OTN Data Policy, animal tagging metadata and their association with detections on any OTN platform may, at the Principal Investigator's discretion, be placed under a 2-year embargo, i.e. will be kept private (PI access and designates only) until 2 years following the expiration of the tag (based on estimated tag life as provided by the vendor specifications). PIs may request further extensions to their embargo period, with OTN reviewing and approving requests on a case-by-case basis. Earlier release of a researcher's matched detection data may be required by the terms of a granting agency or desirable to the researcher for other reasons. In such cases, OTN can distibute this data at the researcher's request. For example, the metadata pertaining to animal capture, tagging, and release are often released before associated detections.

These by-project filtered GeoServer links are provided both on the Project Metadata Page (Related URLs section) and the All Public Data page (under the discovery directory).

  • animals.kml - products list details of tagged animal releases including release date, time and location, taxonomic hierarchy and animal morphological details if provided
  • animals.csv - products list details of tagged animal releases including release date, time and location, taxonomic hierarchy and animal morphological details if provided

As well as distribution to the OBIS Data Portal (using recently developed OBIS-ENV MoF and compressed detections) via OTN’s IPT (animal tagging metadata and detections)

There are OTN supported tools (Python: resonATe, R: glatos) which will assist with identifying false detections via filters such as the Pincock time-lag filter, distance, impossible velocities, etc. OTN can provide support to researchers learning to work with these tools. You can see more here https://members.oceantrack.org/data. OTN's previous workshop material can be viewed on the OTN YouTube, the OTN Github, and on our Acoustic Telemetry Toolbox Curriculum (in development). To arrange a workshop/walkthrough of the tools in use by OTN partners please contact OTNDC@DAL.CA.

Public Distribution Endpoints

Upon publication, distribution will consist of OTN's public endpoints:

  1. All Public Data page: https://members.oceantrack.org/data/discovery/bypublic.htm (same links also found on individual Project Metadata page)
  2. OTN Geoserver: https://members.oceantrack.org/geoserver/web/
  3. OTN ERRDAP: https://members.oceantrack.org/erddap/index.html

As well as distribution of species occurrence data products to the Ocean Biodiversity Information System's Data Portal (using OBIS Event Core with eMoF and compressed detections), available via OTN’s IPT

Accessing Public Data

GeoServer

PRIVATE Data Products

These are posted into each project's secured project repository, in the Detection Extracts folders.

A detailed description of the data types made available to OTN collaborators in advance of publication is available here: https://members.oceantrack.org/OTN/data/otn-detection-extract-documentation-matched-to-animals

sidenav