Showing posts with label monitoring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monitoring. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

"The Very Handy Manual: How to Catch and Identify Bees and Manage a Collection" is Now Available

The latest edition (March, 2010) of "The Very Handy Manual: How to Catch and Identify Bees and Manage a Collection" is now available.

Compiled mainly by Sam Droege at the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab with input from specialist researchers and taxonomists over several years from 2004-present, this guide provides detailed instructions on bee monitoring techniques including specimen collection, processing and management; bee identification; and more! The manual also provides guidance on the capture, monitoring, identification, and curation of native bees.

The NBII Pollinators Project coordinates and supports pollinator-related biological informatics projects carried out by the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and its partners, and provides in-kind support to ventures that benefit pollinators by improving pollinator data delivery and access, and developing decision support tools for resource managers.

You can also subscribe to Sam Droege's Youtube channel and learn How to Dry Bee Specimens, one of the handy techniques described in the manual.

Photo: Honeybee and Purple aster (Apis mellifera, Aster sp.) - A honeybee feeds on purple aster flowers.  Photo credit: Elizabeth A. Sellers.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Bird Monitoring Data Management Paper Published

A paper summarizing results from a bird monitoring data management session led by Bird Conservation Node Manager Elizabeth Martín at the 2008 Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference is now published and available online as part of the Partners in Flight Conference Proceedings. The paper titled “Gathering, Organizing, and Accessing Data for Use in Bird Conservation across the Americas” can be accessed here; it was authored by Ms. Martín and NBII partners’ staff Bruce Peterjohn (USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center) and Steve Kelling (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). This paper and session, which identified data management needs for bird monitoring data in North America and provided recommendations for addressing those needs, served as an initial step for some of the bird monitoring data management activities now being undertaken by the U.S. Monitoring Subcommittee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI).