Willamette Aquatic Invasive Network

Data Sharing Protocol

1.Submit your invasive species observations, survey, and treatment data to iMapInvasives

  • Share at least yearly, ideally every six months and/or after major data collection events.
  • You may simply contact Lindsey Wise () directly to discuss or follow her established procedures.
  • Prioritization for sharing can be summarized in two ways
  • By type
  • observation (and assessment in iMapInvasives lingo) data
  • survey data
  • treatment data
  • And, by species
  • I’m hoping that the WAIN “priority plants working group” list will work well for data sharing prioritization too. Stay tuned for info from that group!
  • I would encourage folks to share all the invasive species data they have beyond just priority WAIN species.
  • Information on required fields for Observation data is also availablehere.

2. Grant others access to your existing or newly integrated iMapInvasives data submissions

  • Signthis data sharing permissions documentand send to Lindsey Wise. If you want to allow sharing of your polygon data as well, please write this into the “Caveats” section of the document.
  • Lindsey Wise can accommodate a wide range of data sharing preferences per your organization’s requirements.

3.Utilize iMapInvasives data in support of WAIN efforts

  • Request access to the WAIN area of interest’s data from Lindsey Wise or view data online at
  • Once available (in progress at iMapInvasives and also reliant on the above data sharing agreements), download invasive species observation data for the entire WAIN project area from the iMap site, or contact Lindsey Wise for custom data requests.
  • Geographic download of survey data via the iMapInvasives site may be forthcoming, in the meantime Lindsey can coordinate sharing of this data between WAIN members.
  • Treatment data cannot be downloaded, but can be visualized on the iMapinvasives.org website.
  • iMapInvasives.org data agreements do not allow redistribution of the raw iMap data, all organizations need to request access directly from iMap. See and more information.

4. Continue to

  • Collect data using your otherwise preferred methods and technologies (e.g. ArcPad, ArcGIS, MS Access, mobile apps, datasheets)
  • Encourage the public to use
  • Use and/or other established methods for high priority and time sensitive observations
  • Share GIS data not appropriate for iMapInvasives.org inclusion (e.g. orthophotos) using ad hoc or other existing methods

5.Share your challenges

  • Please share any issues or challenges that you encounter using iMapInvasives with Lindsey Wise and, perhaps, the WAIN group as well if you have solutions.
  • Please keep in mind that Lindsey Wise has many demands on her time and that there is no guaranteed timeline for integration of submitted datasets. Last year submissions were integrated every 3-4 months.

Many WAIN partners are already financially supporting iMapInvasives.org in Oregon and if you wish to join them please contact Vern Holm (). Please also be aware that a few changes are needed within the iMapInvasives platform to support the WAIN group and we may have to wait before all the iMap functionality is available. There are also known bugs with this website. This is a long-term process.

Thanks for your attention to this important matter and please keep in mind that our group is an emerging effort and we are aware that these recommendations may need to be changed and supplemented in the future! They also do not solve all our problemsJ For example, these recommendations do not address a recommendation to develop a specific monitoring protocol for these surveys and to document these invasions in systematic ways. If we take the above data sharing steps, however, we believe that we would be in a much better position to realize value from implementations of the those recommendations by multiple partners. Additional details for information sharing of non-GIS data within WAIN will be forthcoming as well.

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