Salmon Research and Monitoring Interest Group

An RDA Interest Group dedicated to the salmon research and monitoring community which will aim to accelerate the uptake of interoperable methods and data from research, management, and monitoring, so as to empower the community to further develop the mechanistic understanding of what drives salmon declines, and importantly develop methods to counter the declines. We will focus on these factors through the development of Working Groups aligned with the RDA methodology, 12 – 18 month focussed efforts to tackle specific challenges in adherence to FAIR principles in line with the RDA mission.

There exists an enormous and diverse salmon research community, brimming with enthusiasm for monitoring, understanding, and conserving salmon populations across the north Atlantic and north Pacific oceans. Despite extensive effort in management, research, habitat restoration, and public engagement – this community is witnessing dramatic declines of these species. An RDA Interest Group dedicated to this community will aim to accelerate the uptake of interoperable methods and data from research, management, and monitoring, so as to empower the community to further develop the mechanistic understanding of what drives these declines, and importantly develop methods to counter the declines. There is also a requirement to rescue legacy data that are on the verge of being lost, especially time series data sets that are either not in digital format or isolated on internal systems and languishing offline. We will focus on these factors through the development of Working Groups aligned with the RDA methodology, 12 – 18 month focussed efforts to tackle specific challenges in adherence to FAIR principles in line with the RDA mission. We intend to collaborate with other RDA Interest Groups to leverage ongoing sharing of  knowledge efforts, standards, protocols, and tools, to boost the success of our contributions. What we accomplish through our  RDA Interest Group will directly and immediately inform other branches of ecology. This Interest Group will help RDA boost ecological data mobilization more widely.