SoS - Agency Partnerships Initiative

Working together to improve salmon data access

Photo courtesy of WSC staff

Salmon management and conservation, especially in-season fisheries management, rely heavily upon timely access to many different types of information. Unfortunately, information collected by salmon management agencies varies widely in its availability. Datasets may be distributed among many different offices, stored on individual hard drives, exist only on paper, or circulated without any documentation explaining its appropriate uses. The net result is that critical information on salmon populations is difficult and expensive to pull together, making the job of decision-makers and researchers harder.

One solution to the twin problem of data management capacity and data access is collaboration. In 2008, State of the Salmon (SoS) initiated the Agency Partnership Initiative with three fisheries agencies in the North Pacific — Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada (DFO), and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) — to break down barriers in salmon conservation and improve each agency's ability to share valuable salmon information. The Initiative is marked by an enthusiasm for making positive incremental changes by demonstrating the value of improved information technology — from normalized database systems to web-based applications for processing and sharing data - in meeting fisheries management and conservation goals.

Each agency project is focused on its own particular business needs but with the help of a larger community of data management and research practitioners — the Salmon Data Access Working Group — each project is also striving to create systems that increase standardization across borders. As a result, all three agency projects aim to better position fisheries agencies to manage for healthy salmon stocks by increasing internal work efficacy, improving data and systems interoperability, enhancing public understanding, and accelerating future investments in additional data management and access systems where needed.

Quick project comparison (click thumbnail for more detail):

Salmon Data Access Working Group (SalDAWG)

We are convening a Salmon Data Access Working Group (SalDAWG) in lockstep with the three projects in order to guide their development. This is an exceptional chance to convene specialists in the fields of data management, web and database design, as well as salmon research and management in an applied context. We aim to enhance collaboration among practitioners across North America and provide a foundation for increased standardization across jurisdictions.

The group is sharing existing work done in the areas of data architecture, database design, and data visualization so as to advise on the appropriateness of available standards and tools for use in the proposed projects. For example, although data should conform to national or universal standards such as FGDC or NBII metadata standards, this initiative offers a unique opportunity to review and apply standards specific to salmonid monitoring and stock evaluation that have been developed by others.

Current SalDAWG membership list. (49kb pdf)
The SalDAWG will have a chance to meet in person three times during 2008-2010. Each agency partner hosts one of the gatherings.

Past meetings:

November 3-4, 2008 in Nanaimo, British Columbia. Click here to see presentations, notes, and other information from the first SalDAWG meeting.

Upcoming meetings:

November 4-6, 2009 in Portland, Oregon. Click here to learn more about the upcoming, second SalDAWG meeting.
2010 in Alaska

Extranet Login

Are you a SalDAWG member? Sign in here for documents, discussion, events and more related to your agency project (ADFG, DFO, ODFW) and for the Salmon Data Access Working Group (SalDAWG).

Interested in being part of SalDAWG? Want to learn more about any of the projects or find out how you can support our work? at 503.467.0791, or sign up for email updates at http://eepurl.com/bsN0

Project Overviews

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

We're working with the ODFW Research Lab in Corvallis to create a web and database system to:

• Make it easier for ODFW staff to track their progress towards meeting conservation goals for coastal coho.

• Provide public access to frequently requested data and information on salmon and aquatic habitat in coastal Oregon and the Lower Columbia region.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada

We're working with DFO staff at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo to develop a summarized catch and escapement data set by Conservation Unit (CU) to:

• Ensure DFO researchers have ready access to standard, core information needed to assess biological status of CUs.

• Establish the groundwork for eventual public access to escapement, catch rate, and CU status information in BC and Yukon

Alaska Department of Fish and Game

We're working with ADF&G's Copper River and Prince William Sound Commercial Fisheries staff in Cordova to create web and database systems to:

• Make it easier for ADF&G staff to enter, edit, retrieve, and analyze escapement, age, sex, size and harvest data.

• Provide public access to frequently requested data and information.

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