WildTrax Guide

Index

Last updated: 2022-09

WildTrax Guide

The goal of this guide is to provide a comprehensive, accessible, engaging and referenceable set of documentation to help you get started using WildTrax and explore its many features and functions. The documentation is constantly being updated to match the system - this edition being released in 2022 alongside the Phase 7 development release of WildTrax.

 

Don't have time to read the guide? Click a tab that most applies to you to get started.

 

If you're an administrator wishing to create or manage an organization or projects within WildTrax

 

  1. Create a WildTrax account using an email address
  2. Create an organization(s). The WildTrax Team will verify your identity to finalize your organization setup
  3. Create a project(s) within your organization
  4. Upload data to your projects
  5. Process your image or acoustic data within the online interfaces, or manage your data in the organization
  6. Use species verification to ensure high quality data
  7. Publish, share or download your data

If you're a user who will be assigned tasks : 

 

  1. Create a WildTrax account and provide your user name to the project administrator, who will add you to the appropriate projects.
  2. Projects will then be visible on your dashboard. You'll be assigned either as an observer or validator.

If you are a partner or collaborator wishing to share or discover data:

 

  1. Browse the published projects available in either the project dashboard, Data Discover or Data Downloads.
  2. Request Access to organizations or projects to alert administrators you would like access to their data.

Using this guide

The pronoun “you” throughout the guide refers to the reader. “We” refers to the WildTrax Team in general. You can jump to different sections of the guide using the links. WildTrax specific tools, functions, jargon or important fields are bolded.

 

Notes and disclaimers are stylized like this.

  • Collapsible areas have detailed information or a workflow you can use in WildTrax

     

    Here you'll find more information like step-by-step instructions, screenshots or detailed information about a WildTrax function

     

Environmental sensors

Environmental sensors are increasingly being used to monitor environmental and ecological attributes across broad geographic scales. These sensors allow for automated data collection over an extended period of time, resulting in the accumulation of large amounts of valuable data.

image
Sensors can be placed for long periods of time in remote locations

Biological data

Biological data can be derived from these sensors such as counts of animals. WildTrax seamlessly integrates this type of data across multiple sensors, along with point counts, a commonly used method for determining the relative abundance of taxa, particularly birds.

image
Monitoring wetlands for long periods using environmental sensors can easily inform about the songbird community and find rare nocturnal species.

Open data

Open data is data that can be accessed, re-used or redistributed by anyone and is freely available in a usable and convenient format. Openly shared data benefits the scientific community and society as a whole. Maximal data accessibility allows users (e.g., researchers, conservation practitioners and the public) to find, manipulate and analyze data, as well as link avian data to other types of information. Open data can lead directly to conservation knowledge and action. This requires data to be usable, inter-operable and reliable.

 

WildTrax is a proponent in making data as open and accessible as possible and many organizations are shifting towards a more open, collaborative, co-produced framework in order to answers ecological questions. Recognizing the importance of data privacy, WildTrax also offers many options and features to control how data is shared with other users.