VerMonitor is a comprehensive collection of assemblage time-series in which the abundances of the species that comprise ecological communities have been monitored over time. Tracking the status and trends of biodiversity is critical for understanding the health of the ecosystems on which we rely, but also to identify species and places that are most in need of conservation action.
VerMonitor database is designed especially for scientific synthesis studies with research questions about Vermont biodiversity. The database will contain tables on species abundances across time and space, as well as important metadata about the taxa, habitat, and sampling methods. We believe that data is valuable and should be made usable; therefore we abide by the FAIR data principles.
The VerMonitor Index is modeled after the Living Planet Index and others. It is designed to track the abundance of plant and animal populations across the state. Together, the trends that emerge will be used as a measure for changes in Vermont’s biodiversity. It will do this in much the same way that a stock market index tracks the value of a set of shares.
The building blocks for this index is the VerMonitor database, an ever-growing catalog of species population monitoring schemes and data gathered from as many sources as possible. The majority of these are publicly available and are found in scientific literature or online repositories of plant and wildlife census data.
One of our challenges is to make sure we have robust data for as many taxonomic groups and regions as possible for population trends. While there are comprehensive monitoring projects for some species in Vermont, especially birds, records of population trends for many groups are sparse.
If you have a dataset to contribute, please join us and register it with VerMonitor.
